A very big thank you again to the Highland Community Energy Society for continuing their support of WSWG as a beneficiary of community funding each year from their Littleton Burn Hydro Scheme at Dalguise. It is a particularly valuable and versatile donation for WSWG each year, so is very much appreciated. Have a look at the WSWG Case Study on their website to remind you of how we have used their funding over the past few years. Visit www.hces.coop and search for the Community Fund.

Tragically, on 11 February, the PKC Planning and Placemaking Committee voted unanimously to approve the proposal for an intensive poultry rearing unit at Newbigging Farm adjacent to Taymount Wood, despite substantial local objection, including from WSWG and many of our members. The only mention of our community woodland in the planning report was as screening for the development and as a buffer for any pollution of King’s Myre Loch SSSI from the production unit. Needless to say, we are extremely sad and disappointed at this outcome.

Slightly belatedly, a very Happy New Year to all our members and supporters and here’s to a good one for us all. We’ve been hinting over the past couple of months at a change of direction for the WSWG Project and so the main purpose of January’s Community Monthly Update is to tell you a bit more about where we are heading in 2026.

Where has 2025 gone? Hopefully our regular newsletters will have kept you in touch with the WSWG Project throughout the year. You can look back at all our Community Monthly Updates on our website to remind you of the diverse activities and connections we have enjoyed. In the meantime, here are a few photos of some of the new activities which took place in 2025. And to all our members and supporters, the WSWG Board of Trustees would now just like to wish you a very happy festive season and we look forward to catching up with you again in 2026.

Courtesy of WSWG volunteer, Mike Thewlis, we once again have a functional noticeboard at each of the four main entrances to Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood. So a big thank you to Mike for all the work he has put in over the past few months repairing and replacing the old ones which were all well past their sell-by date. At last, we will be back to being able to post regular updates for walkers and other woodland users at whichever point they access the woods. Thank you also to the PKC Community Payback Team for pre-clearing the vegetation at the north entrance of Five Mile Wood to help Mike in the task there.

Mike Abbott, a founding member of WSWG.
It is with great sadness that we wish to let you know of the passing in August of our dear friend, Mike Abbott. It was Mike who started the whole WSWG ball rolling when, whilst walking his dog in Taymount Wood in 2018, he came upon a small notice announcing that the woods were for sale and that communities with an interest in buying, leasing or a management agreement should submit an Expression of Interest. With just two weeks left before the deadline, Mike and wife Betty got the local grapevine going and, the rest, as they say, is history. Mike was a key member of the WSWG Steering Group for several years until ill health meant he had to step back, and we are so grateful for everything he put into the development of the WSWG project at that critical stage. We send our love and thanks to Betty and family and will remember Mike very fondly.

WSWG member Mike Thewlis has been investigating the local access network and has come up with a circular walking route he has named the “Stanley 3 Woods Nature Walk”, taking in Taymount, Five Mile and Stanley Rookery Woods along the way. He is encouraging us to use our core path network and other walking routes to get out and discover (or rediscover) what’s there on our doorstep. Read what he has to say about local access and other connections helping us enjoy and improve our natural environment.

On 1 April, WSWG participated in the Nature Networks Community Engagement event in Birnam, one of several such workshops run recently by PKC in conjunction with Perthshire Nature Connections Partnership. (Nature Networks? See our Word of the Month for more information.)

The concept of West Stormont Connect as a vision and conversation space for encouraging regenerative practices and connectedness for people and planet at local landscape scale in fact preceded the WSWG Community Woodlands Project. Whilst the WSWG Project has been evolving as part of the concept, other positive contributory factors have been developing alongside, including the Stanley Biodiversity Village initiative. The map evolved following a Mini Bioblitz programme for P&K Biodiversity Villages organised by Tayside Biodiversity Partnership in 2023 when WSWG asked for Taymount and Five Mile Woods to be included within the Stanley Biodiversity Village boundary.

Our ongoing priority this month has been working through the steps involved in submitting our revised funding application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), including another very useful Teams meeting on 28 February with Lauren Arthur, our NLHF Engagement Officer. We have been using our Vision Refresh Report from Nikki Souter Associates to inform the shape and scope of this new application where we are approaching NLHF as the main funder in bringing Taymount Wood into community ownership. As this involves material changes since our initial Expression of Interest was approved by NLHF in 2024 when we approached them as a prospective lesser funder, we will shortly be resubmitting our revised Expression of Interest to them. If accepted, we will proceed to submitting what we see as a very exciting Phase 1 funding application as soon as possible.

But meanwhile, can you guess what this is a photo of? See our Extra Word of the Month below for the answer.

This has been another month where behind-the-scenes admin has somewhat outpaced community stories or new milestones to lead on, so we will instead begin with a celebration of two natural highlights of the WSWG year so far. For most of us, the Aurora Borealis used to be a rare sight in Scotland, needing us to travel to the northern isles or northern Scandinavian for more reliable and impressive viewing. But recently, the Northern Lights have been much more active over the UK, both locally and even down to the south coast of England. Here are some shots taken of the skies above Taymount Wood around the turn of the year. Our second natural highlight is that Taymount and Five Mile Wood came through Storm Eowyn’s 90mph winds remarkably unscathed, both a joy and a relief to us all. Forestry and Land Scotland have carried out priority tree clearance to keep forestry tracks open. Thank you to those WSWG members who reported windblown trees across the core paths.

It’s been a deliberately quiet month for WSWG over the Christmas period so instead of a summary of what we’ve done in the past few weeks, our focus this January is on wishing all our members, supporters and wider community a Happy New Year, and then musing, with the help of a few uplifting photos taken this week, on how beautiful our woods are when draped in winter sunlight, frost and mist and what a stroll in nature can do for our spirit and wellbeing at this time of year. So, if you can, make sure you enjoy this treat for real with your own walk in the woods, whatever time of year it happens to be.