Day 4: Invermill campsite, Dunkeld to Pillars of Hercules Organic Farm campsite, Falkland

I'm lying in the tent with two sleeping children beside me, no sound from the other tent, birds busy singing all around us, bees working busily somewhere in the forest and the background noise of cars on their way to work on the A912. We're in the Pillars of Hercules organic farm campsite and having a well deserved lie in and rest day. It was a blessed relief arriving here yesterday, a peaceful haven amongst the fields and commuter roads of Fife, nestled at the foot of the Lomond hills. And so different from the two holiday parks we stayed in already, with their big tents, campervans, caravans, people playing music. Here we're nestled in amongst trees and shrubs in the small cyclists' camping area, with a sign marking a bumble bee nest in the centre of the campground. We're vaguely aware of other campers in other camp areas. And we're nicely shaded from the baking sun. Plus, nestled in amongst the trees, it was a warmer night. 

Day 4 was a slightly shorter day (about 50km), and we managed to leave Dunkeld earlier than the previous day (about 1030 - it takes a while getting everyone fed and packing up!), but it was the latest finish of the four days. Probably the combination of a long break in Perth and a steep, long climb into Fife. And yet, we still had a group of impressively happy and exuberant children by the end of the day. 

Philine started the morning with a swim in the river. The children worked hard building a water slide in the river, 

needing a bit of persuasion to eat breakfast, and to leave. 

The first part of the cycle route south took us beside the A9 to the train station. 

We met a man there about to set out from his campervan on his mountain bike who told us about his cycle trips up to Inverness in the past. 40 years ago he said he had just cycled on the A9 - it was a much quieter road in those days, and it would take 4 hours just to drive it. It made me think even more about our willingness to jump in the car for any journey

Then we set off on quieter roads, the sun baking our tired bodies. 

More wild food along the way (redcurrants).

The cycle route took us away from the A9 towards Glen Almond, up and down through fields and farmland. Up one of these hills I noticed a real drag from the trailer and looked back to see a completely flat tyre. Patching the puncture was much quicker than if it had been on the bike, so I was thankful for that, but I was wishing it had happened somewhere shadier. The sweat was dripping off me by the time I'd finished. 

When I caught up with the others again they'd found a shady layby for snacks and drinks. 

The route took us into Glen Almond and then onto the Perth circular cycle route - a shared use track that follows the River Almond to the Tay, and then the Tay right into Perth.

We arrived into North Inch (a huge golf course and park in the north part of Perth) by this route in time for a late lunch by the River Tay. On our ride through North Inch we arranged to meet Jim Fairlie (SNP MSP) at our lunch spot - it was probably a welcome break from his constituency office work.  We spent over an hour chatting to him about environmental issues. Clearly the hands of the Scottish government are tied on many issues that could have an impact on sustainable practises around the world, but the SNP have been making moves on sustainability heading towards the net zero target. Part of the problem is coming up against big businesses and big landowners whose main drive is short term monetary gain.  I hope that the move away from GDP as a measure of economic success will help to mitigate this.

As a constituency MSP and backbencher, Jim Fairlie feels he has minimal impact on governmental policy, but I hope his environmental concerns would be communicated in parliament.  He has a very interesting background, having been a shepherd, then a farmer, and I think he is very well placed to represent the Perth and Kinross constituency, with its large farming areas. He told us he introduced the first farmer's markets to Scotland in 1999 after a trip to France. But they couldn't run them more frequently than once a month because people prefer the convenience and price of supermarkets (with their plastic packaged food traded and shipped or flown long distances from places with questionable food production practises). He said that many years ago people spent an average of 30% of their earnings on food.  Now people spend an average of 8%.  There's an expectation that food should be cheap.  But this needs to change if we are going to live more sustainably.  We raised the subject of community growing projects, and that they need to be more accessible to people living in densely packed areas. I told the story of a friend (Maria) in Inverness who has spent seven years with her community in discussions about setting up a community growing area in Inverness in an area zoned for housing.  Green spaces should be prioritised.  And I told him I really don't understand this need for more housing, when many people seem to have multiple houses. I'd like to see a heat map of Scotland showing how many houses are actually occupied at any one time.  Important wild spaces are being obliterated by housing estates, and I'm really not sure that the housing shortage is a real thing.

The children all had an opportunity to raise their concerns with Jim Fairlie, and they'd divided them up between them.  Olly spoke about the need for more trees and green spaces.  Jim asked him - what kind of trees? And it seems that part of the tree planting program in Scotland is about planting non-native Sitka spruce. It was introduced from Scandinavia for timber, and takes over from other tree species, leaving non-diverse woddland.  Walking through pure Sitka spruce forests I've noticed that lack of bird noise and animal sounds.  Heather talked about plastics (more to follow from Heather on the blog) and their bad effect on the environment.  Freya talked about sustainable travel (more to follow on the blog), and Lente talked about where food comes from. 

Overall we were very pleased that we had the opportunity to raise these issues and that Jim Fairlie took the time to speak with us.  He got a photo with us for his Twitter feed https://mobile.twitter.com/JimFairlieLogie/status/1417554271332143104 and advised us to use Twitter for our journey. I have to confess, I tried Twitter once and it didn't really agree with me (!) but I might give it a go. 

So we left Perth quite late in the end. Cycled through roadworks and climbed out on a busy road before reaching the cycle route again.  Then a fairly quick journey to Bridge of Earn where we stopped at the Co-op in the blistering.  While Philine went in to get Ice-creams for the kids, a man and his daughter stopped to ask us about our journey.  They lived just round the corner and offered us water refills and a shady place on their patio to eat ice-creams.  So Philine did our food shopping and we headed round there and were very well looked after! We were transformed from tired, hot, weary travellers into keen cyclists rearing to go again - thank you Dan and Flo! I love the kind gestures of strangers, and I'm so glad that the children have been able to experience that.  And it was so interesting hearing about their lives - they had been living in the south of France and moved to Scotland for Flo's dancing school.  Dan is a music teacher and a runner - he said he enjoys joining the Land's End to John O'Groats runners when they pass through Bridge of Earn for a social 10k. His wife was out at work, so we didn't get to meet her.  We are so grateful to you, Dan and Flo and hope your journey in life continues the way you want it to.

We would definitely not recommend cycling on the A912 out of Bridge of Earn, but it was a short distance, and then we were off on the 200+m climb from Glenfoot and up into the heart of Fife. We made slow progress up the hill, but had many stops for fluid and fuel.  Three of the four children decided to make rivers of pee on their way up the road, so the climb was mainly accompanied by hilarious laughter.  And they kept themselves very well hydrated!

And then we came over the crest of the hill, and a vista of fields and farmland spread out ahead of us, capped by the two majestic Lomond hills. And a fabulous downhill that took us to the last section to the campsite. We had our dinner surrounded by trees and birdsong - a very fitting place for our rest day.

Kristina