Local player turns home of golf into haven for nature lovers

New nature tours are being launched at a rewilding site and luxury events venue in Fife, writes Ilona Amos.

Seasonal tours are the latest offering from Kinkell Byre, an up-market wedding venue in a converted barn on a former arable and livestock farm just outside St Andrews.

They will run from

September to March each year, offering visitors the chance to learn more about rewilding, the Fife coastline and the historic seaside town.

Owner Rory Fyfe began the Rewilding Kinkell project in 2020 and will lead the tours. He will explain to guests why rewilding is so important for the environment and how it will benefit the land at Kinkell by allowing natural processes to take hold again, reversing the loss of biodiversity caused by intensive farming and encouraging the return of native plants, insects, birds and larger animals.

Guests will also learn how an increase in plant life will capture greater quantities of climate-warming carbon from the atmosphere and have the chance to meet Kinkell’s special team of “conservation grazers” – Highland cows Coco and Ginger.

The first stage of the rewilding project has already seen 6,430 native trees planted, ten wetlands created, wildflower meadows sown and 981 metres of fencing erected to enable free-roaming conservation grazing in the future. More works are in progress.

The tour will take visitors around the site, giving details of each element of the project. Participants will also be taken on a walk along the local shoreline, a site of special scientific interest, to learn about the volcanic geology of the area. The tour will continue past a secret beach and cave into St Andrews.

Rory says: “There is a lack of understanding of everything that nature does for us, which has led to the crises we face today. Through these tours we hope to do our part to educate people in the importance of biodiversity and help bring them closer to nature.”