I've been looking off and on for quite a few years, missed out a few times on the way. I live in Edinburgh, and in early December decided to make good use of a rare nice afternoon to look at a wood in Stirlingshire, about 35 miles away, just put on the market by woodlands.co.uk. I was more and more in love with it as I looked round, and called straight away, only to find somebody had beaten me to it in expressing interest. But a couple of days later I got a call to say the other party had dropped out, to my delight! 7 weeks on, and it's all gone through:)
It's a 7 acre broadleaf wood, mature but a bit neglected. Lots of sycamore, beech, ash and birch; the odd holly, a few oak, just one or two pines, and one (?) chestnut. A lovely burn, with another stream flowing in, a waterfall and the ruins of what seems to have been an old mill. Also a few areas with overgrown rhodedendron.
I'm trying to resist making definite plans, until I see what's growing underneath, and a bit more of the wildlife - so far just deertracks in the snow, buzzard in the sky and rabbit fur remains on the ground. Keen to get started though, I've been clearing fallen (small) trees and branches from paths (a bit of an exaggeration really to call them paths), and cutting back some of the rhodedendron outposts. Should I immediately take out tumbledown and redundant fences?
By the way, the name given to the wood by woodlands.co.uk is Craigieburn, and it's part of a much bigger 'ancient' woodland called Barr Wood, about 5 miles more or less due south of Stirling. Not far from Bannockburn - and I was delighted to find that Scotland's national bard Rabbie Burns had already written a song called Craigieburn Wood
Scotland's access legislation, which I fully support, means anyone can walk through the woods anyway, but I'd like to extend a warm welcome to fellow woodland people passing that way.
Dave