Trossachs - Foxy

I'm a real early morning person. On work days I’m up at five and leave the house at six to cycle to work from the east side of the city to the west side. I like the quietness of early morning and on my ride to work I often see wildlife that doesn’t show itself later in the day. I have seen deer by the river, otters in the local pond and even a badger one morning on the cycle path. But my most common mammalian encounter in the city is with urban foxes. I’m always thrilled to see them with their pretty, delicate faces and their Irn-Bru coloured coats. I marvel at their ability to adapt to life in the city alongside man. However, it’s much less often that I see foxes when out in the hills and countryside. Perhaps here they are more wary and secretive due to years of persecution. But I was reminded recently that although they may not be visible, they are certainly out there!

When the December snowfall came, I was out for a long, rambling meander in the Trossachs. Essentially a circuit of Loch Vennachar from Callander with pleasing detours. Before the snow the weather was grey with a low ceiling of cloud and so little light that it was difficult to tell when the day ended and the night began. In late afternoon after a walk to Loch Drunkie during which I saw not another soul, I pitched the tent in the trees on the shore of Loch Vennachar. The rain that had fallen unremittingly during the afternoon turned to hail in the evening and then snow during the night. I knew this before I got up in the morning as, lying cosy in my sleeping bag, I could hear wet, heavy snow slide down the sides of my tent.  

As I set out along the trail, I enjoyed a world transformed by the snow into something wilder and prettier. But what I enjoyed most of all was walking with the foxes! That’s to say we walked the same trails, just hours apart from each other. It seemed that on every path I took that day there were fox prints in the snow, parallel to my own. And sometimes there were two sets of prints from different foxes whose paths also crossed at different hours.  Onwards I walked passed Brig o’Turk, through the woods of Glen Finglas and along the Great Trossachs Path above the loch and fields. All the way my route was criss-crossed by foxy tracks.  

Fact File

Start/finish: Callander

Public transport: Train to Stirling, bus to Callander.

My route: Followed national cycle route 7 south out of Callander along the south shore of Loch Vennachar and onto Loch Drunkie. Back to Loch Vennacher to camp then continued west on south shore track, taking eventually right turn on track signed for Brig o’Turk. Followed Great Trossachs Path back to Callander through Brig o’Turk and Glen Finglas woods then east in the fields and hills above the north shore of Loch Vennacher.