Well, the weather wasn't half as nice as yesterday but what a wonderfully varied day out it's been in Fife :)
I took the Lean Green Biking Machine to Culross and from there we pedalled cross-country to Dunfermline, where I had my first ever visit to Pittencrieff Park. Then I had cake below the abbey.....before pedalling back along the 11-mile-long and wonderful traffic-free West Fife Way, which goes all the way from Dunfermline to Clackmannan. Weirdly, as much as I do enjoy riding narrow, winding trails in forests, there's also something hypnotically soothing about pedalling 7 miles of straight, flat, traffic-free tarmac ;-)
I came off the cycleway at Devilla, made a bit of a wiggly route through the lovely forest, crossed the A985 and then pretty much rolled all the way downhill on empty farm tracks, back to the coastal cycle path and eventually back to Culross. I won't be able to sit down for a week but it was great fun ;-)
Another week, another tick removed, another addition to the freezer. This one was larger than last week’s but still very much on the small side. Eurgh! Found this one on my foot!
Things aren't always as they seem. Devilla Forest in Fife might look like a boring plantation from the outside when you drive past....but go exploring inside and you'll find four stunningly beautiful lochs :) This is how they looked yesterday.
Just after Hogmanay we had a run of subzero days here in Fife, the first such weather we’d seen in almost four weeks. While it mightn’t have been snowy I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to see the landscape in a white cloak of any description, so on a freezing cold January morning I dusted down my mountain bike and headed off to Devilla Forest in Fife.
The air in the forest was absolutely calm, and a frigid temperature of -6C had allowed beautiful hoar frost to develop on the surfaces and for the lochs to freeze over. The scene was set for an exquisite 21km pedal around on two wheels, snapping away with my camera at every turn.
In this blog I’ve posted some of the pics I took that morning but, before we get to those, I thought I’d give you a bit of background to Devilla and my previous explorations of this enigmatic place.
I’d lived in Fife for several years before I even visited Devilla. I was prompted to do so when I was commissioned by Scotland Outdoors to write an article about the hidden treasures of Fife.
It occurred to me that I probably wasn’t even aware of most of said treasures and I therefore asked the question of the great Scottish public. What ARE Fife’s hidden treasures? Devilla was one of the responses on Twitter (thank you again to David from Alloa!) and so on a beautiful spring day I cycled all the way from Dunfermline (on the 11 mile traffic-free cycle way) and spent most of the day exploring the forest on my bike.
I was cycling around for hours, happily getting lost as I explored the labyrinth of trails. Devilla is a Forestry Commission site covering 700 hectares so it’s not huge by any stretch of the imagination, but the forest roads are distributed evenly throughout the entire site, and there are innumerable informal paths all over the place:
I’ve revisited the forest half a dozen times since then, on every occasion trying to cover as much ground as possible without covering the same ground twice.
My GPS tracker plots my route when I get home, and no two visits show the same paths being ridden. I always end up missing some out. The simple reason for this is the staggering number of trails, formal or otherwise. No matter how hard I try, even as my knowledge of the place expands I seem incapable of covering every path in the forest in the course of one visit...and I know that there are loads of paths I’ve not yet gone down.
Devilla rewards repeat visits as it always seems to churn up something new. Furthermore it is crammed full of history, ranging from prehistoric coffins and stone circles, to boundary stones and plague graves. Hiding away among the trees are gravestones, a mausoleum, drystone walls, wooden carvings, an old ice house and WW2 buildings.
Some of these things you can just happen upon by accident but the site has been extensively documented by local historians, whose fantastic unofficial maps of Devilla and its features can still be found dotted around the forest at key locations:
My tip for you, should you visit and should you encounter one of these maps, is to take a photo of it and carry it around with you on your phone/camera. It’s a great map anyway with all the historical features marked out, but the Forestry Commission map at the main entrance doesn’t show the whole site nor does it show the smaller paths. Plus of course you are likely to get temporarily lost without a map in your pocket!
Happily, though Devilla is a managed pine / spruce / larch plantation that was mostly planted in the 1950s, the site was established a sufficiently long time ago that it avoids that depressing claustrophobic feel that blights so many modern forests. Forestry as in industry at Devilla apparently dates back to the 1730s, and if you explore the red squirrel trail around Bordie Loch you’ll see this lovely photo of Fife forestry workers at a local sawmill in 1913:
Bordie Loch is just one of four beautiful lochs at Devilla, and regardless of where I go or how much ground I am trying to cover when I visit, I always make a point of visiting all of them. Each one is very different in character and a route that takes in all four is recommended......on a bike, certainly. But you could just as easily walk the trails too. Here’s how those lochs look in the summer and autumn:
Peppermill Dam:
Bordie Loch:
Keir Dam:
Moor Loch:
They’re all gems, I’m sure you’ll agree? And they’re buzzing with wildlife too.
Naturally there is considerably less ‘buzzing’ in winter, but the forest’s charms remain through the colder, darker months, especially on those beautiful blue-sky frosty days.....which brings us back to the present.
On my January bike ride I set off from the car park at sunrise, and got to see the golden light streaming through the forest on my way to Bordie Loch:
As I stood taking that photo I heard something large and heavy crashing through the undergrowth. A roe deer, fleeing the early morning dog-walkers.
At Moor Loch I took the perimeter path and stumbled upon a festive holly bush that someone had decorated with tinsel and battery-powered lights. An unexpected sight that first made me smile and then made me wonder whether whoever put it there was going to come back and get it once Christmas was over.
On the loch’s eastern edge the rushes were rising into the morning sunshine like sausages on sticks. Gloriously warm in the sun, freezing cold in the shade.
At Moor loch’s northern edge I stopped at a well-worn gap in the rhododendron and snapped a photo across the open water. This was my first visit in the depths of winter and it was surprising just how bare the loch looked in comparison to the summer, when there is no open water to be seen:
Onwards, past old stone walls....
....to Peppermill Dam - the largest of the four lochs. Completely frozen on this day.
Even though the sun was blazing through unblemished skies, white frost stubbornly adorned every tree and every blade of grass.
Pointed and sharp, but even breathing on the ice crystals brought about their destruction:
I lingered longest, and indeed usually do linger longest, at Keir Dam. Hidden away off the main trails it’s a lovely sun trap, but in all my visits I have never seen anyone else here:
On the fringes of the loch, the woody skeletons of summer growth sparkled against the dark forest interior. The sun didn’t seem to be making much headway in melting the heavy frost:
Indeed, when I arrived back at the car park some hours later the water in my bottle had frozen.
I was buzzing, so headed out for one last circuit of Bordie Loch before heading home. As always it had been a convoluted route within a relatively small space, but at no point did it feel like I was running out of options or risking getting bored. My only real motivation for finishing when I did was my stomach demanding food.
There’s no visitor centre or cafe at Devilla but there is a farm tea room / called the Walled Garden, which is a couple of kilometres up the forest road on the eastern edge of the forest. It is signposted from the A985 and is, frankly, fantastic. I stuffed myself silly with soup, sandwiches, scones AND cake the first time I happened upon it, as I was exhausted from hours exploring the forest. It’s the perfect lunch spot to split your ride/walk up or to reward yourself after your exertion. Personally I like to visit it AFTER I’ve ridden Devilla’s trails and before I ride the 7 miles back along the old railway to Dunfermline. One word of caution though. TAKE CASH! They have no card machines at the cafe. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
For more information on Devilla and some of the way marked trails, download the Forestry Commission leaflet.
My word, it was a crazy beautiful morning here in Fife. I pedaled 25 freezing cold and convoluted (but joyous) kilometres around Devilla Forest near Kincardine, stopping at every turn because of the astonishing colours and lovely frozen landscapes :)
