Forsinard Flows – Bog Pools and Birds of the Flow Country

The walk

RSPB Forsinard Flows starts at the old railway station at Forsinard, on the A897 in Strath Halladale, postcode KW13 6YT. Park free in the small car park the reserve shares with the station, with two Blue Badge spaces and more room on gravel beside it. The reserve and its trails are free and open at all hours. The visitor centre and toilets are in the station building beside the level crossing, open every day 9am to 5pm from April to October, and only on weekdays, 10am to 2pm, from November to March.

The boardwalk starts on the far side of the railway, over the station's level crossing; trains are few, four a day each way and one on Sundays. The Dubh Lochain Trail is a round trip of a mile, about 45 minutes by the RSPB: out on the boardwalk to the Flows Lookout, a two-storey tower with two platforms, one up a shallow ramp and the other up two flights of stairs, and back on a path of flagstone steps through the pools, which rejoins the boardwalk partway home. The boardwalk has no rim or railing, so take care with a pushchair or wheelchair, and bring them back the way they went, by the boardwalk, as the flagstone path is steps. In spring and summer look and listen for golden plover, skylarks and meadow pipits, the likeliest birds, and for hen harriers; dunlin and greenshank breed here but are harder to spot.

Lizards lurk on the boardwalk's edge, dragonflies dart over the pools and swallows often nest in the Lookout; nothing is promised. Keep to the trail, and keep dogs on a short lead, above all from April to July while birds nest on the ground. There's no café at the visitor centre, but there are two picnic benches. The privately run Forsinard Lodge Tearoom is about a mile north on the A897, open Wednesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm, and shut on Mondays, Tuesdays and all of January, by its own site.