Baaa the Sheep Free Challenge...Baaaa

[w00dsmoke]

:yelrotflm

After reading many fascinating posts about here in my native Scotland, I'd like to offer a just for fun/knowledge sharing challenge to anyone interested/bothered.

I'd like to think I'm fairly well travelled in some of the wilder parts of the land, however there's a lot I'd like to visit and see. On my travels I'm absolutley sick and tired of seeing sheep everywhere-wooly maggotts, they destroy our natural environment. Let's be honest most of Scotlands slopes below roughly 1500-2000ft should be covered in woods of some varying description (debatable for ever I'm sure!).

The challenge is to name anywhere in Scotland where you have been that is as wild as you know where there is no grazing by sheep or cattle (unless it's part of a management strategy such as grazing by Highland Cattle in Pinewoods) and it's relatively natural.

NNR's and the like can be included but not obvious places such as FC plantations.

Good luck and here's my first couple to start you off...

. Mull on the steep wooded shore of Loch Tuath opposite Ulva
. Rum
. Tentsmuir NNR-Fife



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[fishy1]

What wild places you going to? I go to plenty sheep free places. Cairngorms pretty sheep free higher up.

 

[w00dsmoke]

What wild places you going to? I go to plenty sheep free places. Cairngorms pretty sheep free higher up.

You have to be pretty high up before you are sheep free there!

 

[fishy1]

Not in my experience. Maybe sheep are attracted to you?

 

[w00dsmoke]

Not in my experience. Maybe sheep are attracted to you?

Baaahumbug !Without getting into a slagging match with you Fishy , I worked for many years around and in the Cairngorms (I lived in ole Snecky) and sheep get pretty much everywhere except higher up and on the NNR etc. Farmers were notorious for cutting holes in their or other folks fences to allow their sheep to wander in to plantations, sssi's and the like. I patched enough of their handywork in my time.

I think to hilight WILDER areas that are left in Scotland that are not commerically grazed, will show all of us areas that may be wilder, remoter, truer representation of what Scotland should be like and even it may hilight some of the more unusual places where we can go and bushcraft or whatever. I think it would be nice for people to know where these are to see what Scotland really should be like across much of it and isn't.

And there's not that many places anywhere that are not affected by sheep grazing (strip grazing ), even the banks of Loch Sheil and Mhoidart have sheep everywhere except for a few fenced off "native woods".

 

[Toddy]

I agree; older practices (pre 1700's) had the sheep brought in at night to sheephouses for much of the year, and their wool was much more highly valued. They weren't left to wander and devour at will, so to speak.

You don't really need that wild to be sheep free though, some of the Gills that lead into the higher reaches of the Clyde have never been grazed, and they've never been felled either because of the difficulty of extracting the timber. Amazing biodiversity there.
I was told by an environmental geographer that it was the grazing of sheep & goats protected by man that caused the Sahara desert and many of the problems in Africa and Australia.

Sheepy jokes of a woolly nature are fine but please recall that this is a family site.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Ogri the trog]

They must be really sad places Woodsmoke.

Just the thought of being outdoors and...... no sheepuppy_dog


Or is it just me :theyareon


Ogri the trog

 

[locum76]

its not that wild i suppose but they have stopped grazing sheep around loch katrine these days (i guess the good people of glasgow were getting fed up of yellow tap water ).

If you look closely you can see the natural succesion of woodland starting to creep in there, maybe in twenty years we'll see developing natural woodland around Katrine, and possibly other reservoirs in the trossachs..?

 

[andy_e]

its not that wild i suppose but they have stopped grazing sheep around loch katrine these days (i guess the good people of glasgow were getting fed up of yellow tap water ).

LOL! Wasn't there a Cryptosporidium problem in Katrine a few years ago? That may be why they've been stopped. Not that I drink the tap water unfiltered round here anyway - too much bloody chlorine in it.

Edit: Not so much the yellow as the brown http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20020811/ai_n12577618

If you look closely you can see the natural succesion of woodland starting to creep in there, maybe in twenty years we'll see developing natural woodland around Katrine, and possibly other reservoirs in the trossachs..?

I hope so.

 

[Grooveski]

Wasn't there a Cryptosporidium problem in Katrine a few years ago?

Sure was, wasn't pretty.
The annoying thing about that was the numbers they bandied about afterwards in the press, making out like it hadn't really happened.
They claimed around 6 or 7 confirmed cases but based it on the numbers of samples sent from GPs to the lab where they tested for the wee nasties. Took no account of the hundreds of folk who either just rode it out or went to their doctors but didn't get tested(there was no real need for tests, everyone knew what was causing it).

Anyhow, sheep!
Out at Scotts place there are a few area where grazing was common until a hundred years ago or so. The fields were well enclosed - usually edged by burns, cliffs or other natural boundaries but there is evidence of fences in a few places.

The recovery process seems to be bracken first, like a scab forming to heal mans handiwork. Then birch working in from the edges.
Once there's a canopy the bracken dies off in the wood then when birch fall it allows light in and other species to grow up between them.

 

[Arth]

If you have trouble getting to sleep you could always count the sheep.

 

[locum76]

The recovery process seems to be bracken first, like a scab forming to heal mans handiwork. Then birch working in from the edges.
Once there's a canopy the bracken dies off in the wood then when birch fall it allows light in and other species to grow up between them.

thats a similar process to whats happening at katrine.

 

[Aliwren]

:

The challenge is to name anywhere in Scotland where you have been that is as wild as you know where there is no grazing by sheep or cattle

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Parts of Glasgow! erm I will get my coat