Glentress – Quiet Ponds and Tall Douglas Firs Above the Tweed

The walk

Glentress is on the north side of the A72 between Peebles and Innerleithen, and it's well signposted. EH45 8NB is the nearest postcode. Cameras read your number plate at the barrier, and you pay by card at a machine before you leave. The first half hour is free, then it's £3 for up to an hour, £4 for up to three hours or £6 for the day, and Blue Badge holders park free. The Gateway building is open every day from 9am to 5pm and there are toilets on site. The Glentress Forest Café is open every day from 10am to 5pm, and its kitchen closes at 4.30pm.

All the walks set out along the Multi-user Trail, a wide gravel path with views over the Tweed Valley, and Forestry and Land Scotland's lengths include it. The Ponds Trail is the easy one: 2.6 km, or a mile and a half, and about an hour on firm gravel with seats along the way. The ponds lie in a sheltered hollow where a grove of Douglas fir once stood, until a storm brought some of the trees down about 40 years ago. Ash, birch and pine grow round the water now, and herons, bats and red squirrels live here. The Glen Trail is longer and rougher, 4.1 km, or two and a half miles, and takes about an hour and a half. It passes the ponds and winds up among Douglas firs that are nearly a hundred years old, with short steep slopes, loose gravel and tree roots underfoot.

Trees from this bank have gone to sea as the masts of tall ships, and Glentress fir built the café too. The trails cross forest roads and the first stretch is shared with bikes, so keep an eye out. There's open water at the ponds, so watch small children closely. Dogs are welcome in the visitor centre and the café, and there's water for them outside. Harder trails climb higher into the forest, among them the Time Trail to the Iron Age settlements at Janet's Brae, and Forestry and Land Scotland's trail map shows them all.