5MR Fife

 After reading Seth's 5MR post (here) it occurred to me that last year, apart from a trip to Skye, I basically already live in 5MR! My office was already within 5MR before I started working from home. Pretty much all of my patches, too, are within 5 miles. In fact so much so that my intention in retirement was to potter about principally by bicycle (partly so I don't become a widening blob).

Here's a map of my patches within 5 miles of my house. Which is ... mmmm ... all my patches. I'm not sure whether that's a bit sad or good luck. It does have a very good range of habitat, from Emperor Moth to Pilot Whale.

Oh, and for the moment I'm not allowed to go out of Fife (why would one ever want to?)

Calais Muir: mixed wood. Very good, but being surrounded by new housing. Dogtown.

Fordell: old estate and Boy Scout Central in Scotland. Lovely wet woodland, largely unexplored.

Dalgety Bay: coastal loveliness. >2k spp. recorded

Inverkeithing: Bay, brownfield, disused quarry - calcareous coastal (Otter, Pilot Whale, Leach's)

Carlingnose Point - more calcareous grassland, classic seawatching point (Dropwort, Skuas)

Mossmorran - bog, heather, etc., muddy pool edge is unpublicised autumn wader spot (shhhh!!)

Cullaloe Hills - Conifer plantation, blaeberry

Cullaloe LNR - if you don't know ... >2k spp. recorded

Humbie Wood - historic Lobarion site, lovely damp wood. Bit doggy. Largely unexplored.

This was the entirety of my recording last year, so if you remove some Munro bagging with minimal (but nice!) recording you'd basically end up with my already-existing world.

And this is how we do it...

Braefoot Point NT178832 - vismig point 1

Inverkeithing NT137822 - vismigpoint 2 (old bike)

The coastal path can zip me through lots of prime habitat. Everything else is a bit uphill. Inverkeithing vismig point is 15 mins west, Braefoot 15 mins east. Cullaloe's 25 minutes, but uphill. And 15 mins back! Everything else is contained by a loop between my old house, my new house and my old office, which would take me about 1.5 hours to get around. Even the hills have access roads/cycle trails.

I didn't scribble my map, since I mostly use ViewRanger app on my phone,. But it did remind me that after some infuriating years of living on the edge of an OS map I ended up getting this!