Friends of Craigencalt Trust
Visits to Glassmount House Gardens are a real favourite.
A poem inspired by a very busy Sunday at Craigencalt and Kinghorn Loch in mid-January (2018) in the ice and the snow.
A walk up Rodanbraes
Walking up Rodanbraes
On a snowy winters day
A dedicated jogger
Slipping along his way
Two ladies amble by
Sipping their hot coffee
Wrapped against the bitter cold
Enjoying what they see
Three boys swinging
On a rope from a tree
Noisy and immune to cold
Swinging high and free
Four mountain bikers
Fly down Woodland Rise
Easily gripping the frozen ground
Beneath the snow-filled skies
Five racing bikers
Swiftly leave the ridge
The friendly troll, smoking his pipe
Beneath his homely bridge
Six couples with their dogs
Chatting as they go
They do this walk often
But not in freezing snow
See seven goldfinches
Munching at the seed
Hear soaring buzzards, mewing,
Keeping warm is their need
Eight dogs sniffing in the snow
Their noses find snowdrops
Silly gorse with yellow flowers,
Icy crystals on their tops
Nine birders in the hide
Big lenses set to go
Snapping the kingfisher’s every move
On twigs coated in snow
Ten times two out in skiffs
Brave the freezing loch
Breaking through the creaking ice
The bow takes the shock
Not a breath of wind
And a café on the way
A treat for all at Craigencalt
On a snowy winters day
By Sian Edwards
January 2018
Annual Meeting and Photo Competition.
The Photo Competition is held each year with the result announced at the Annual BBQ in August. The pictures do not need to have been in the current year and any subject is accepted as long as it relates to the Trust in some way. From the views and countryside around here, to the Walking Festival or Walking Group, or water sports and heritage. Even, some silly antic at the BBQ. While tidying up your photo is allowed, trickery and staging of photos is not. The photo should represent what anyone can see if they were fortunate enough to be there at the time. The deadline for entries is around the end of July. You can submit up to three photos, either to info@craigencalttrust.org.uk or by hand or post for paper prints.
Voting is open to all Friends of CRCT with up to three votes, (1st, 2nd and 3rd choices) in by this deadline. The entries will be available to Friends as an online presentation.
Any queries, just email info@craigencalttrust.org.uk or text Marilyn on 07740999514.
The result of the Annual Photograph Competition is announced at the Annual Friends BBQ. The winner earns ownership of the trophy for the year and their name will be engraved for posterity.
The BBQ is on a Friday evening in August, held at Craigencalt Cottage from 6.30pm. We ask £5 each for adults to cover food while children are free. Please bring your own drinks for the evening. Please let Marilyn know if you are coming, and how many are coming, so we can plan the food. Email info@craigencalttrust.co.uk or phone 07740999514.
The entries from 2024 can be viewed on the Photo Competition page.
Ian Archibald holding the Photo Competition trophy after the presentation at the annual Friends BBQ at Craigencalt Cottage. Well done Ian.
Ian's winning photograph. A picture from the Puffin colony on Inchkeith. These two birds aren't on speaking terms.
Become a Friend of Craigencalt Trust.
The work of the Trust is supported by ‘Friends of CRCT’. It you would like to consider becoming a Friend of the Trust, have a look at the ‘Friends Information Brochure’ (click on button below) and please fill in and return the application form. There s a suggested donation of £10 each for adults (or whatever you can afford) but children are free. It helps if you are able to Gift Aid the donation. It also greatly helps with admin if friends can pay by standing order.
The ‘Friends of CRCT’ are vital to the wellbeing of the Trust. The subscription helps with administration costs (which just for insurance exceeds £560 a year) but these are kept to a minimum as we do not have paid staff, all efforts are entirely voluntary. You might like to willingly volunteer to be out on a cold, wet February day to put out the barley straw on the rafts to keep the water quality of Kinghorn Loch in excellent condition and maintain this special environment. Or perhaps helping to lay paths on a hot, sunny afternoon in May. Perhaps you might like to plan projects or get together with others on the social side and see how to best involve Friends, especially families. And, of course to have fun and enjoy the banter.
There is no doubt that Friends and visitors alike consider Craigencalt and Kinghorn Loch to be a very special place, giving a wide variety of walks, hummocky hillsides, water and the massive array of wild flowers and birds. It was not surprising that on a ‘Bumble Bee’ walkabout, we found all the eight common bumble bees just in the garden of Craigencalt Farm, together with a ‘Cuckoo’ bee and a lot of flies pretending to be bees. The history of Craigencalt, with one mill going back at least to the sixteenth century and the ‘new’ mill (from 1790) intrinsically linked with the development of whisky in Scotland - the Burntisland Grange Distillery of William Young, who helped form The Distillers Company. Presentations on this part of its history and the industrial history of the Burntisland Oil Shale Works at Binnend help to keep the interest up. Further to this is the past pollution of Kinghorn Loch which up to 1985 was “dead” because of leachate from Alcan landfill at Whinnyhall, and its fantastic recovery since; something that we and British Alcan Aluminium Ltd can take great pride in having achieved virtually single-handedly since my work in the 1980s and then us, as Kinghorn Loch Users Group from 1998 to 2011, amalgamating with the Pathways Group into Craigencalt Trust and continuing to work with British Alcan Aluminium ever since.
By Ron Edwards.