Visited June 2025

Good news! A day in the Flow [it rhymes with cow] Country was not so bad… I can even say it was a very nice and interesting journey. I started in Inverness, taking the morning train all the way to Forsinard (West Halladale component). I arrived at the empty station 10:30 – I was the only passenger leaving the train there (and only few passengers continued their journey probably to Thurso, the final station). Just at the right moment – the lady from nearby research centre came to open the old station building which now houses the visitors’ centre with interesting presentations (and a video on TV screen) about the region and the blanket bogs and peat. I asked her about the plaque with WHS/UNESCO information, and she said that it was a simple one in front of the train station (just behind the fence) but it’s been gone a couple of weeks ago… And she went back to the research and management building. Visiting the centre is free, but you can leave a small donation or buy postcards/magnets – pay by putting some money into the box.  

Depending on time you have, you can spend up to 3 or 6 hours there – until the trains back to Inverness stop at Forsinard. You have two possibilities: 1. follow the Dubh-Iochain Trail – it is a very short one that takes you through the blog and peatland pools to the lookout tower; from the top of the tower you’ll have great vistas of the Forsinard component; the whole route is inside the core zone and walking on the wooden and stone paths you’ll have some information boards about the peat, different kinds of mosses and lichens, sundew plants (Drosera – there are lot of them!!! On the picture.) and cottongrass, also about local insects and mammals (I had a chance to see only red deer – many of them, mainly in the buffer zone); 2. follow Forsinard Trail which starts few kilometres north of Forsinard train station, to do it rightly you have to walk around 16 km there and back to the station (or if you lucky enough, somebody can give you a ride, if there are anybody going your way); this trail is mostly in the buffer zone, but it has the same features like I’ve seen in the core zone (trail 1), no pools. 

I took the evening train towards Inverness and got off in Helmsdale where I spent the night. The next morning, I went to the wide to see the remains of the longhouse and Kilphedir Broch; it seems that both archaeological sites are within the inscribed area (south-eastern part of the East Halladale component).

The lesson I’ve learnt at this WHS: now I know what the bogs and peats are (in wet circumstances plants like in here, mostly mosses, do not fully decay when they die, they compress creating a layer of peat and store the carbon instead of releasing it into atmosphere) and why they are important to sustain our environment (the Flow Country store about 400 million tonnes of carbon!).