Off beaten path

It is more than just the stories of Heritage Paths that are fading from the landscape (your report, 3 September). I recently tried to walk the centuries-old track between Tweedsmuir and Kingledores Hopehead in the Borders marked on the 2001 revision of the Ordnance Survey map.

This was ultimately the “coffin road” for my ancestors – shepherds at Hopehead in the 18th century – who are buried in Tweedsmuir kirkyard. I found the track completely obliterated by an impenetrable conifer plantation, and no practicable alternative route. A piece of our heritage recently destroyed by forestry.

At least if a wind farm had been planted there the track would have had a chance of survival.

EDWARD DUVALL Dalhousie Terrace, Edinburgh