The sun was shining on Wednesday and when we saw the Thursday weather forecast we decided to make the most of the good weather as Thursday looked like it was going to horrendous. As it turned out it wasn’t too bad.

Anyway, we thought – where can we go? – and decided to drive to Tentsmuir Forest as we saw it on a recent Country File programme. It’s on the other side of Fife from where we live and we had never visited it so thought it was high time we did. The forest was used as a camp for Polish soldiers during World War 2.

I think all the different nationalities have particular things which they love most scenery-wise, for Germans it seems to be forests which they rate highest. West coast of Scotland folks love hills and lochs. Some east coast of Scoltand people can’t stand to live too far from the sea. Elsewhere I have no doubt it’s ploughed fields or massive flat vistas like those in Norfolk which get them going.

Where I was brought up, on the west coast of Scotland, in a town which is hugged by hills, there was no need to catch a weather forecast. My mother used to ask me to have a look and see what the sheep were doing, if they were at the top of the hills then it was going to be fine all day and we could hang out the washing with no fear of rain. So I’m a hill person. Mind you I was watching something on tv recently and the chap mentioned ‘the mountains’ and gestured behind him to what looked like a wee grassy slope to me, but apparently in Wales that is what they call a mountain! I wonder what they would call our crags?

I see that I’ve meandered horribly, but – back to Tentsmuir Forest. I absolutely love trees, but don’t have an awful lot of experience of being in amongst masses of them. Tentsmuir consists mainly of pine trees, which should be great for the red squirrels, and indeed there are red squirrels in residence but they were nowhere to be seen. In my experience the best place to see red squirrels is Auchterarder, they run in front of your car as you drive into the town on the main street! What a fright they give you, you don’t want to knock down a red squirrel. A grey one, well….

So it was a similar day out to the last time we went to a local wood, that one was near Ladybank. By that I mean it was just about devoid of wildlife, despite there being notices telling you to look out for red squirrels, highland cattle, roe deer and various other animals. I saw two wrens which I rarely see in my garden, so I was pleased to see them but they bobbed about so fast that I couldn’t get a photo of them. Other than those we just heard a few birds in the distance and saw a couple of baby rabbits which moved too fast to get a photo of them. The highlight was a beautiful damsel fly which arced in front of us only to disappear within a second. This photo is of the beach which is made up of very fine sand and the odd sea shell. That’s the North Sea in the distance. A sun worshippers paradise probably but I like a beach to have interesting things to look at like – stones, driftwood and seaglass.

Yet again I would have seen far more wildlife if I had just stayed at home! Unless you count the flying beasties of many varieties that is. Right where I took this photo we were being bombarded by them from all angles. Nightmarish.

Standing on exactly the same spot I turned around 180 degrees and took this photo of the forest from the beach. It doesn’t look very dense, but it is. I think they are trying to mix it up a bit as there seem to be some birch trees and spruces too, but they’re very wee. Forests of just one sort of tree look so artificial, because they are I suppose. I’ve come to the conclusion that although I’m a bit of a tree hugger, I’m not so keen on them en masse.

There are lots of images of Tentsmuir which you can see here.