1.5
know your place!
This site follows a familiar pattern - a huge plantaion of largely commercial pine and spruce with a car park and a few waymarked trails through the trees of varying difficulty and length.
To the credit of Forestry Scotland, the parking is free for blue badge holders and there is a designated accessible trail. This is the "Giant Fir Trail" and comprises a "shady meander through soaring Douglas firs and beside the burn". The surfacing is wide and firm and generally flat with short gentle gradients.
Thats where the good news ends. The Giant Fir "Trail" is actually only 400m long in total, so its really more of a glorified picnic area than a "trail".
Forestry Scotlands website invites visitors to "push deeper into this vast forest...head further into this lovely woodland..to find Gen Dubh reservoir and enjoy lovely views..." But this wont be possible if you've mobility problems. Not because there are many miles of scooter- and wheelchair- able trails in the wood, but because access to them is impossible.
A forestry road that leads up from the parking area is gated and locked and the two paths that connect the parking area to the "Gorge Trail" and "Troll Trial" - two longer paths based on the network of forestry roads here - are too steep, rocky and rooty for even my terrain Hopper to tackle.
This is sadly too often the case in our national Forestry plantations - accessiblility seems to be seen as mainly a Health and Safety problem, and the thought of someone in an all-terrain wheelchair or scooter roaming the millions of acres they own gives them nightmares.
The solution at Sutherlands Grove is so simple - if they just put an accessible gate instead of a locked one near the entrance to the car park, we too could enjoy this part of our own land.
Incidentally - just a few miles away, at Fearnoch, they've managed it. See my review.
This site follows a familiar pattern - a huge plantaion of largely commercial pine and spruce with a car park and a few waymarked trails through the trees of varying difficulty and length.
To the credit of Forestry Scotland, the parking is free for blue badge holders and there is a designated accessible trail. This is the "Giant Fir Trail" and comprises a "shady meander through soaring Douglas firs and beside the burn". The surfacing is wide and firm and generally flat with short gentle gradients.
Thats where the good news ends. The Giant Fir "Trail" is actually only 400m long in total, so its really more of a glorified picnic area than a "trail".
Forestry Scotlands website invites visitors to "push deeper into this vast forest...head further into this lovely woodland..to find Gen Dubh reservoir and enjoy lovely views..." But this wont be possible if you've mobility problems. Not because there are many miles of scooter- and wheelchair- able trails in the wood, but because access to them is impossible.
A forestry road that leads up from the parking area is gated and locked and the two paths that connect the parking area to the "Gorge Trail" and "Troll Trial" - two longer paths based on the network of forestry roads here - are too steep, rocky and rooty for even my terrain Hopper to tackle.
This is sadly too often the case in our national Forestry plantations - accessiblility seems to be seen as mainly a Health and Safety problem, and the thought of someone in an all-terrain wheelchair or scooter roaming the millions of acres they own gives them nightmares.
The solution at Sutherlands Grove is so simple - if they just put an accessible gate instead of a locked one near the entrance to the car park, we too could enjoy this part of our own land.
Incidentally - just a few miles away, at Fearnoch, they've managed it. See my review.
For additional detailed accessibility information, please contact: enquiries.west@forestryandland.gov.scot
