No happy ending in store for desolate Altnabreac

Once upon a time, there was a railway station, probably the remotest in Britain, in the heart of the vast moors of the Caithness Flow Country. It was called Altnabreac.

Nearly 50 years ago I cycled out there, a long ride on rough estate tracks, then wheeled the bike for miles over the wet moorland past the Caol Loch to pick up another estate track at Loch Caluim.

A few years later the world changed and landowners could plant trees instead of paying tax, suddenly huge areas of peat were ploughed up to be converted into slow-growing forests of mixed lodgepole pine and sitka spruce.

The idea was that the pines would dry up the peat with their long tap roots, allowing the much more valuable spruce to grow strongly, eventually overshadowing the pines which would die.

The rate of growth in these northern climes was, though, so slow that no profit could ever be turned and huge amounts of taxpayers' money was wasted on many square miles of folly and many miles of new forest road.

Now we know that peatland is a vast carbon store and this planting was about the worst thing you could do, releasing huge amounts of CO₂ as the peat dried and degraded. But new owners came, buying the forests for a song and it was just about worthwhile to harvest the timber for pulp and biomass fuel.

I cycled out to Altnabreac again recently, taking a new forest road which loops for miles from near Dirlot out towards Braehour then cuts back past Loch Meadie to rejoin the Altnabreac road. Now the trees have largely been removed you can see the sheer scale of landscape engineering that was undertaken - we were playing God with the land.

Beyond Loch More the track forks, one branch heading for Dalnawhillan and Glutt, the other taking a more direct route to Altnabreac. There are locked gates here, designed so you can easily get a bike or a horse across. At least 14 notices adorn the start of the Altnabreac route, surely a record, yet none warn of the real problems.

As you cycle on, mile after mile through the vast felled or remaining forests, you can but marvel at humanity's stupidity. Which peaks at Loch Caise.

Thirty years ago, public money created a set of walking routes here, you were encouraged to drive out, park and walk. It lasted but two years, the notice and map of the walks, bizarrely, remains, the walks have long vanished into the bog. Someone, maybe a new owner, banned cars and visitors from using this only road to the station and getting to the start of the walks.

The owners of the house at Altnabreac have made the station access their private garden, so there is now no way of getting to the trains, which therefore no longer stop. Will the station ever open again? I hope so, I want to take a kayak down the Sleachd before the next stage of destruction of this area...

Southwards, as the sun came out, I pedalled swiftly past Lochdhu Lodge to stop for a break by the fine Loch a Mhuilinn, outside the forests and still a typical peaceful Flow Country loch. Whooper swans swam, larks sung.

The former huge lodge at Dalnawhillan continues its slow decay. The barking dogs by the keeper's house still alert everyone for miles as you pass. The estate track is well maintained, indeed better than some public roads, and it was an enjoyable ride back to Loch More, out under the big sky above the River Thurso, giving a false illusion that nothing has changed here and nothing will.

The worst potholes on the Loch More road have, amazingly, been fixed and it was a smooth and sunny ride back home.

Alas, those forests. They have sealed the fate of the whole area. When the true value of the Flow Country was belatedly realised and it was declared a Unesco protected site, the degraded forest land was excluded.

One might have hoped that the forest would be restored as peatland, as has been done around Forsinard. No, there is far, far more money to be made. Turn this whole area into a huge wind farm of 600-foot high turbines garnished with industrial battery storage plants.

Just a bit of cut-and-pasting from other applications or even use ChatGBT to make the case that every potential damage can be mitigated. Then let the millions roll in!

Soon the train will trundle for miles past an industrial desolation. Nobody will want to get off at Altnabreac anyway. Our world-unique Unesco landscape degraded and diminished by towering turbines almost before the ink on the documents is dry. Once upon a time... it will not end happily ever after.