Tayport - Tentsmuir Forest

Tentsmuir Forest

Tentsmuir is a popular, extensive pine forest planted on the sand dunes at the mouth of the River Tay; there is a wide variety of plants, wildlife and architectural heritage.

The area of 3,700 acres (15 km²), was acquired by the Forestry Commission in the 1920s and planted predominantly with Scots and Corsican pine. In addition to commercial forestry, careful management has created an interesting mixture of open spaces, ponds, trees, and sand dunes that are rich in wildlife including three species of roosting bat.

Several forest walks begin at the Kinshaldy car park and picnic site, and of special interest is the 19th-century ice house and pond built to keep locally-caught salmon fresh. The Kinshaldy beach area includes a former icehouse and World War II fortifications. Extensive views over sand dunes to the North Sea and St. Andrews. The beach area, known as Tentsmuir Sands, was included in the Marine Conservation Society's Good Beach Guide 2003, which means that it is included in the list of Scotland's 32 cleanest beaches.

The area of Tentsmuir Point is included amongst the 73 National Nature Reserves in Scotland, which are areas of land set aside where the main purpose of management is the conservation of habitats and species of national and international significance.

This large area of sand dunes and beach at the mouth of the Tay Estuary forms an important roosting and feeding area for huge congregations of seaduck, waders and wildfowl, as well as a haul-out area for over 2,000 both common and grey seals. The reserve's grassland and dunes are especially favoured by a wide variety of colourful butterflies.

In prehistoric times, the district around Tayport was inhabited by Neolithic settlers, whose clay pottery and finely-wrought stone arrowheads have been found in considerable quantities on Tentsmuir, (once an area of heath and moorland, and now owned by the Forestry Commission). These settlers had not learned how to use metals and did not practise agriculture, but lived by hunting and fishing. The sites of some of the early settlements have been located by large collections of shells and, although nothing remains of their homes (probably primitive turf huts) one of their boats, a hollowed-out tree trunk, was found in a sandbank near Newburgh, further up the Tay, and is on display in Dundee Museum, which keeps a good collection of Neolithic artefacts.

Tentsmuir has also been the site of dozens of exiting Bronze Age finds; implements and ornaments made by the Celts who moved into the district, have been discovered near the remains of iron-smelting sites.