On weekdays and Saturdays, if we’re not on an excursion or supermarket shopping, we normally walk through Balbirnie Park on our way to Markinch for the newspaper. Usually by the path which flanks Balbirnie Golf Club’s front nine holes by the road up to/down from the hotel.

We vary our Sunday walk.

Sometimes we go on what we call the loop, round the other side of the golf course from that path and past a field near the Markinch roundabout where there are usually some horses grazing, then up by the main road (safely behind the old Balbirnie Estate wall) till the path turns back onto the access road which leads to our house.

At others we go up by Balbirnie golf club’s back nine holes.

Last January not much play would have been possible. Or if possible, not easy. The flooded parts had iced up:-

Mind you the water hazard might have been a bit less so. (Not that playing off the ice would have been advisable):-

The Back Burn runs through the Balbirnie Estate on its way from the East Lomond round Markinch and on to the River Leven near Methilhill. It’s good for walks – even when you’re not cooped up by a lockdown.

After wandering under the A 92 and through a wooded glen it runs past the eighteenth hole of the golf course built over half of the estate:-

Then down a cobbled slope:-

Under a bridge:-

On:-

And on:-

Before swinging under another bridge to make a turn under Stob Cross Road across to the railway line and down the east of Markinch:-

One of the things you might not expect to see in Fife but is present in the estate is a Giant Redwood tree:-

There’s a wildlife pond between the boarded path and the redwood as seen from near the burn:-

Balbirnie Estate has a lot of rhododendron plants. They’re just about on the point of coming into flower this year. This was from 2019:-

Son of the Rock Acres overlooks what remains of the grounds of the former Balbirnie Estate, indeed it is built on part of it, though half the original estate is now a golf course.

A group of deer lives on and around the estate. Sometimes they even run across the access road.

A deer in a copse nearby. You can just spot its rump if you look carefully:-

I managed to get a bit closer. The deer are not easily startled unless someone comes along with a dog:-

Occasionally the modern world intrudes. There is main road to or so hundred yards away but the noise is muted by intervening houses. Not so the helicopters which have been known to land at the hotel to which the big house (Balbirnie) has been converted. Nor the odd gyrocopter/microlight:-