Walk a primrose path


Of all the many spring flowers that add colour to Scotland, the primrose is one of the bonniest. The paleness of its milky-yellow petals is both delicate and symbolic, like an earthly echo of the season’s strengthening sun. Its name is also appropriate for an early bloomer, deriving from the Latin prima rosa or ‘first rose’ (though it isn’t, in fact, a rose). Sunny verges in old woodlands can be good places to see primroses. But some of the country’s finest displays are in grasslands near the sea. The Isle of Barra has the best show in the Hebrides, with primroses by the thousands in many places around the island’s rim. Look for them near Eoligarry, and you could combine flower appreciation with a glimpse of a golden eagle or buzzard overhead. On the mainland, the waymarked Moray Coastal Trail,


which runs from Forres to Cullen, has some excellent primrose banks above its many bays, such as in the section between Hopeman and Lossiemouth.


Web tips: www.isleofbarra.com/barrachs/walking/eoligarry.html www.morayways.org.uk/moray-coast-trail.asp


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3 Hear some old stones


One of my earliest memories is of my voice echoing from fossils. Glasgow-born, I could relish that rather bizarre experience as a toddler because my family lived within a short push-chair ride of the city’s Victoria Park. In 1887 – a year after the park was named in honour of


Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne – its landscape gardeners made an amazing discovery. While digging in a quarry, they uncovered a grove of fossil tree stumps (some almost a metre [three feet] high), a fallen trunk and other plant fragments. The stems are from giant clubmosses. They grew in a swampy forest around 330 million years ago, in a period when plants like these were slowly adding to what would become Scotland’s coal measures. The Victorians constructed a protective building around the grove, which SNH later named a site of special scientific interest. You can look at this world-famous geological treasure from the building’s viewing balcony. And if the park keepers don’t mind, maybe try a quick shout!


Web tips: www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/Residents/Parks_Outdoors/ Parks_gardens/victoriapark.htm


6 The Nature of Scotland


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