Learning to respect our wee, bonny land before it was cool

The last week in July and first week in August will always be summer holiday time for me. Between haymaking and harvest, before staycations were either fashionable or the safest bet, my parents packed the car, building biscuit tins, sleeping bags and assorted ballast into a makeshift demilitarised zone between me and my brother, and took us off to explore Scotland.

Under canvas on Findhorn Sands and midge clouds on Skye, in caravans and cottages on the Black Isle and the Isle of Seil, we filled our fortnights. The posh kids on their package tours and Butlins breaks had guaranteed sunshine and entertainment on tap, but they never knew the thrill of praying the biblical rains battering the side of the tent wouldn’t sweep it and all its contents down the mountainside before you woke. Or the nightly shadow play as mum, armed with a Scholl sandal and a steely resolve, set off on forkytail patrol under the hissing halo of a Calor gas lamp.

By day we’d set off on jaunts to glamorous hotspots like Shieldaig and Golspie and Achiltibuie, grumbling at the mismatch between miles on the map and attractions to be ticked off when we reached our destination, too young and daft to realise it’s on the journey, not the arrival, that the magic happens. And now I find I’d give anything for one more road trip, bickering in the back seat as my parents point out red kites and blackthroated divers through the steamed up windows of a Vauxhall Chevette.

What I’m saying is there are worse places to wind up on holiday than Scotland, and it’s my hope that some of the people trapped into involuntary stay-at-home breaks by Covid cancellations and quarantine restrictions will one day look back with the same fondness on this strangest of summers – although whether those who live and work in some of our more scenic communities will feel the same remains to be seen.

When tourism operators crossed their fingers and sent up a wish that homegrown holidaymakers would save a season in which international travel pretty much ground to a halt, it’s safe to say they didn’t count on the littering, boozing, fire-starting and day trip detritus that has piled up behind this unexpected boom in domestic business.

Police charged three men with vandalism last weekend after they were caught chopping down trees for their camp fire at Clunie Loch, near Blairgowrie. Traffic orders have been put in place there and at Loch

Tummel after locals reported parked cars by the hundreds cluttering up country roads, and in addition to the upsurge in anti-social behaviour, there’s been a series of arrests for drink-driving and speeding in the area. At Loch Earn, a number of fines have been handed out to visitors breaching National Park bylaws put in place to protect the environment. And while we’ve long accepted what bears do in the woods, its turns out humans are quite happy to follow suit, in forests and in sand dunes and pretty much anywhere else that nature calls.

We’ve had similar scenes all summer, from Lunan Bay and the Angus Glens to Tentsmuir Forest and the East Neuk of Fife, as rural roads and residents’ patience buckle under the sudden influx of day trippers intent on letting off some of that lockdown steam. I wonder if they’re breathing a sigh of relief across the Costas and Balearics right now, or if there’s something about the fact that people are here out of necessity, rather than choice, that’s causing some of them to treat the place with such disdain.

Let’s be charitable and hope the problems are down to high spirited ignorance rather than sheer badness

– a by-product of the fact that fewer of us have been accustomed to spending our leisure time in Scotland since cheap foreign holidays became the norm – and that maybe, having rediscovered the world on our doorsteps, we will all be persuaded to shower it with more care in future.

On Thursday, we covered a new report warning one-quarter of our native mammals, including red squirrels, hedgehogs and water voles, are at risk of extinction. The reasons are varied, ranging from historical persecution to the use of chemicals, development, a loss of habitat and the introduction of non-native species, but you don’t have to look far to see the human hand in all of them.

Nature did fine while we were sheltering inside for our own safety and, as in so many other areas of life, the challenge now is to find a new way of getting along. It might require small steps – councils leaving grass to grow in public parks, as they’re currently proposing in Dundee and Fife – or change at national level to protect creatures like the white-tailed eagle found poisoned in Aberdeenshire this week. It might even be as simple as remembering to stick a bag in the car for taking your rubbish home. Look around you though, it’s worth it. Turns out my parents were right.

Pictures: Steve MacDougall/Mhairi Edwards/ Shutterstock/PA. Clockwise from top left: The Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye; people walking past parked cars further up the road where the bollards stop at Lunan Bay; hedgehogs were included in the Red List report, with their numbers having halved since the turn of the century; the Old Man of Storr on the Isle Of Skye; red squirrels were high-risk on the Red List; wild campers on the banks of Loch Tummel.