One of the UK’s largest waterfalls, Dumfriesshire’s landmark Grey Mare’s Tail, has faced one of its biggest challenges – how to get footpath repairing materials on site.
The answer has been to airlift in, by helicopter, more than 130 bags of stone and aggregates which was dropped off across the Moffat reserve to be used for the paths’ repair with plenty of hard graft put in by the wardens.
With a main fall of around 60m, it has been a tourist attraction since the 19th Century and Sir Walter Scott described it in his poem, Marmion, as the “roaring linn”.
However, the annual thousands of worldwide visitors have left their mark on its footpaths – along with increased extreme weather events.
And in the past month, conservation charity National Trust for Scotland – who purchased by the nature reserve in 1962 – have been working hard to repair the wear and tear to its paths network.
Their endeavours have been captured on film by the BBC Scotland Landward TV programme.
The Landward film crew and presenter Dougie Vipond highlighted some of the work under way on a visit to the spectacular waterfall for last Thursday night’s programme: episode 15 of this year.
Anyone who missed it will be able to catch up on BBC iPlayer.
The helicopter has also brought in fencing which is being used to build an exclusion zone around a population of rare mountain willows that are under threat from over grazing.
It has been funded by The People’s Postcode Lottery and NTS’s Footpath Fund.