Waymarked Trails on Atholl Estates

Click on the pictures of the trails booklets below to view printable online versions of the publications.

Waymarked Trails from Blair Atholl (published by Atholl Estates)
http://goo.gl/iUIJB

Atholl Trails (published by the Cairngorms National Park Authority)
http://goo.gl/tS2sZ

Countryside Trails Dunkeld (published by Atholl Estates):
http://goo.gl/x2a5v

Cycle Routes from Blair Atholl

(published by Atholl Estates)

This booklet is not currently available as an online document but several 

downloadable route cards are available by following the links below:

The River Tay at Dunkeld and Birnam

Atholl Woods and Loch Ordie

The Banvie Circuit

The Falls of Bruar from Blair Castle

Glen Tilt

Killiechangie, by Logierait

Cally Car Park: Track Resurfaced

The track at the entrance to Cally Car Park, north of Dunkeld, has been resurfaced. This is a welcome improvement because the track was getting very potholed and getting your car (or Ranger van!) into the car park was a bumpy and unsettling experience.

Resurfaced entrance track to Cally Car Park, by Dunkeld

It has taken some time for this work to be carried out as there was some difficulty in ascertaining who had 'ownership' of the task of maintenence - the car park was established and is operated through a continuing collaboration between Atholl Estates and Perth & Kinross Council (PKC). It had been understood by the Ranger Service that PKC had jurisdiction for maintaining the track because of public access but, as it turns out from chasing a long paper trail, Atholl Estates is in fact the responsible party. After this had been determined it was only a matter of waiting for a window of reasonable weather in which to carry out the work... possibly the hardest part of the whole process...!

Winter Scenes

The Dunkeld end of the estate and area around Loch Ordie was looking very wintry yesterday. It was a very changeable day: bright sunshine one moment, followed by grey, snow laden skies the next, with very little warning of the transition in between. This made the planned work of counting water birds for the BTO's Wetland Bird Survey (which we have mentioned before) slightly more difficult than ususal. It also meant that the photograph of a cormorant on Rotmell Loch contained more snow than feathers, even though the bird was only a short distance away - so there are no bird pictures below, unfortunately. Instead you can see some scenes of snow and sunshine.

This 'ice plant' has been formed by the water from wind-driven
waves on Loch Ordie soaking the rushes and freezing, over
and over, until the whole plant became encased in ice.

One of the brighter moments of the day, Looking west from the
main track up to Loch Ordie

Land Rover with the bleak grey-white sky behind,
 in the middle of a flash 'blizzard'

...And a view from inside the vehicle (it was stopped when this was taken!)