Langholm Moor buyout has plans for glamping pods, more animals on the hill and community food production
Stretching about 10,000 acres across Dumfries and Galloway with a foot in the Scottish Borders lies land belonging to the Langholm Initiative.
The group is responsible for the south of Scotland's largest community buyout which it completed in the summer 2022. It strives to develop the land, purchased from the Duke of Buccleuch, into the Tarras Valley Nature Reserve.
Building tourism accommodation, introducing community food growing projects and bringing cows back onto the hill are just some of the ideas the initiative is working on.
This is alongside peatland and woodland restoration projects for the reserve.
I attended one of its weekly drop-in sessions to see how the work is coming along two years on.
I could already see changes to the land walking over Langholm Road between Newcastleton and Langholm with young pine trees popping up all over the moorland area which had previously been run as a grouse moor. I was told later that what I saw was all entirely natural regeneration.
"The hard work starts now," said Jenny Barlow, reserve manager. "The buyout was the easy bit."
The initiative is currently working on its five year plan. Ms Barlow said most of the objectives written from the outset of the buyout - to create a nature reserve - are more or less the same. But maintaining a flexible approach to respond to the needs of the community means some of the plans have evolved.
"There's been some interesting things that have cropped up that we hadn't thought about at the time,” Ms Barlow said.
"One is for us to look at food production. Can we look at community growing? And how can the land support local food security?
"In terms of the overall goals things haven't changed, but it's just how we get there."
Walking through Langholm Moor I kept seeing tufts of black and white hair and curved, pointed horns popping up through the heather: the feral goats.
One Langholm local told me there were rumours the goats were going to be culled to protect the new trees.
But Ms Barlow was quick to confirm this wasn’t the case.
“At the moment the goats mob graze, a naturalistic grazing pattern. They don't stay in one area for a long time,” she said.
“So in some places they help to give us that mosaic that we might not get with anything else. They are certainly an attraction, and they mean a lot to people.”
She said the group is looking into introducing other animals, including cows and ponies, to diversify the grazing on the land.
“They will all have different roles in terms of getting that dynamic ecosystem and dynamism back into the landscape.”
Ms Barlow tells me one question the initiative is regularly asked is how are they going to keep funding the community-run site in years to come.
Current income streams include grants, though they are time-limited. There are nine properties on site, of which six have tenants, and a recent felling project of Sitka spruce has also brought in money.
The board members said they use this to fund staff, but also hope to invest it in capital projects which in turn will generate income. One of those will potentially be glamping units, which are being drafted into the initiative’s five year plan.
Angela Williams, development manager, said plans for the three remaining buildings on site, one of which is derelict, should be made by June or July this year.
I asked them about the decision making process, and how they are finding managing multiple opinions for the community owned land.
“It's not straightforward, it's messy,” Ms Williams said.
“Sometimes it might be about consensus, sometimes it's about listening to people who worked the land differently in the past. It's trying to take on board different people's ideas.
“You have a board of community trustees who have got the legal responsibility to make sure the charity is financially viable - so sometimes it can lead to difficult decisions of X might be the best idea but Y is generating more income. Can you take a bit of both? All the time you're looking at different compromises. It is a nature reserve, but we also need to make sure the community are being listened to.”
I walked through the moor on a hot afternoon in May. Having noticed all the heather drying out in the heat, and a lot of young trees, I asked what measures they had in place should a wildfire start.
The head of one of Scotland’s biggest rewilding charities Trees for Life recently said rewilded landscapes are “fundamentally unprepared” for wildfires becoming more regular in the months and years ahead.
Ms Barlow said the initiative is working with the local Scottish Fire and Rescue station to develop an incident response plan after the area was confirmed as a “high risk area”.
There is currently a project under phase one of the community buyout to block up 36 miles of drains and ditches to rewet the site.
“We're really aware of it, and we have a reactionary incident plan, but we are looking at the long term,” Ms Barlow said.
“It's about increasing the resilience of the land by restoring the natural hydrology here.
“Grazing with cattle and ponies, they're going to be taking off the grasses that are really dry and so they'll be helping reduce the fuel load.”
After spending two nights in Langholm, it was noticeable how little work opportunities there were in the area.
Aside from some cafes and a takeaway for food, only one hotel seemed fully open, with another open just two days a week when I was there, and the third, which is up for sale in the region of £270,000, showing random opening times.
I ended up staying with one resident who I met there and who offered up his spare bed. He explained none of his neighbours in the close where he lived worked, and they were users, and on benefits. Another resident told me there is very little to keep young people stimulated and they have to move away.
There’s a sense of pride when you talk to locals about the culture of Langholm, including the Common Rides. But there is also a culture of a few forgotten about people in this remote town, the very people the Langholm Initiative will hopefully help.
Ms Barlow said: “The primary reason why the buyout happened was about supporting economic regeneration, and how the land could support that here.”
It’s early days for the buyout, but I feel this is an area where community ownership makes complete sense, and I hope it works.
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