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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: The Plock

The Plock

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, The Plock

Helen Mark hears about plans to regenerate a community parkland close to the Skye Bridge.

A Viking village and scything festivals – just a couple of the ideas to regenerate The Plock community parkland near the Skye bridge on the North West coast of Scotland.

The Plock of Kyle is a promontory on the North West coast of Scotland, beside the Skye Bridge and close to the villages of Plockton and Kyle of Lochalsh. This old community parkland is a striking landscape with native woodland, meadows and rocky coastline, but it is an area tourists tend to just drive through to get to Skye. Helen Mark discovers how a local community trust is working on projects designed to put Plock on the map. There are plans to reconstruct a village, based on archaeological evidence of the Vikings presence in the area. Park ranger, Heather Beaton, gives Helen a tour of the Plock's newly restored meadows, ponds and nature trails. She extols the benefits of scything and gives Helen a lesson on how to improve her skills. Heather aims to hold an annual scything festival.  

Helen also ventures under the Skye Bridge, to the small island of Eilean Ban, which was the final home of naturalist and writer Gavin Maxwell, author of The Ring of Bright Water. Otters are regularly spotted around the island and a small museum maintained by a local trust commemorates his life story.

Many local people still recall the heady days of protests over the cost of tolls on the impressive Skye Bridge when it opened in 1995. Helen talks to leading rebel and Highland councillor, Drew Millar, who remembers driving sheep across the new bridge in protest and spending a night in jail for non-payment. Thirty people were convicted of non-payment. After nearly a decade of dissent, the protestors finally won and the tolls were dropped. Drew says the protest shows that peaceful civil disobedience can be successful.

Produced by Kathleen Carragher

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