4th day Visit notes to Forestry Areas
The document is courtesy of Glenbranter Forest office staff with particular thanks to Ian Adams who has stored these old files for many years.
This professionally produced booklet was provided as a hand out to a visiting delegation from the 12th Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations. This record is the fifth of eight parts constructed to show the details of the various daily tour notes of the locations visited (See record numbers 4191-4213).
The party leave Pitlochry and cross the Tay at Grantully over a bridge described ‘a fine bridge of five graceful arches spanning the Tay’ The information on a tablet reads ‘This bridge was erected 1733. This with the roads and other military works for securing a safe and easy communication between the High Lands and the trading towns in the Low Country was by his majesty (George 2nd) committed to the care of Lieut. General George Wade, Commander in Chief of the Forces of Scotland.’
Arriving at Drummond Hill Forest the District Officer is once again David A Woodburn and the Head Forester J M Kennedy. The forest is described and said to consist of seven separate sections but the area known as Drummond Hill has a long association with afforestation the first recorded as between 1582 and 1631! There are more descriptions of the forest tree species, plot records and utilisation.
The main thrust of the tour appears to have been visits to experimental stands of European larch grown from seed from different European and Scottish locations planted in the 1930s. Following this they visited a pruning and thinning experiment in Norway spruce with a host of statistics and detail before diverting back into larch provenance trials again! It must have been a slight relief to start discussing and looking at Fommes annosus (Heterobasidium) butt rot and proposals to start treatment of stumps with creosote.
Thereafter the party headed through Killin for tea, viewed the Falls of Dochart and heard all about Rob Roy. The writer would take issue with the statement that the 10 miles up Glen Dochart consists of country ‘rather too high and the soils too poor for extensive forestry’! They are about to cross over into Argyllshire and Inverliever Forest.
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports