4 Sept 2025

Your Gift in Action – autumn 2025

Two people work on the footpath of a mountain

Our Footpath team have recently been working on the Isle of Arran

As summer comes to a close, it’s a good moment to reflect on all that we’ve achieved over the past few months – our busiest and most vibrant season.

Across the country, our teams have been working hard on important projects to protect the nature, beauty and heritage that make Scotland so special. From improving infrastructure needed to access our natural spaces to restoring historic buildings, we’re safeguarding Scotland’s history for the future, today.

Footpath Fund 25

Bob Brown, Upland Path Manager

This year marks an incredible milestone for our Footpath Fund: it’s our 25th anniversary! For a quarter of a century, we’ve been dedicated to restoring and maintaining over 400 kilometres of mountain paths across Scotland’s most iconic landscapes – from dramatic Highland peaks to tranquil forest trails.

One of our recent focus areas has been the Isle of Arran. The team made their first visit of the year in April, returning to Glen Rosa to continue vital work on the increasingly popular path along the Glenshant side of the Glen Rosa burn. To combat ongoing erosion, the team dug out a new path tray and filled it with aggregate and surfacing material. This stabilises the route and ensures it can withstand both footfall and the challenging Scottish weather. Drainage channels were also installed to help divert water off the path and prevent further damage.

This work was completed just days before a wildfire swept through Glen Rosa – but we’re relieved to report that none of the repaired sections of the path were damaged.

In June, the team returned to Arran to address new issues caused by the fire. A section of path leading to Henry’s Bridge (part of the popular Glen Rosa Horseshoe walk) had become unstable, so the team rerouted it to higher ground and constructed a new, safer path line. This means the area remains accessible to walkers while protecting the fragile surrounding environment as it recovers from the fire.

Your support makes our work possible. Thank you.

A man works on the footpath of a mountain

The Footpath team hard at work in Glen Rosa

Canna House re-opens

Angus Murray, Operations Manager, Canna

After nine years of careful planning and restoration, we’re proud to reopen the doors of Canna House and its garden this summer. Once home to Gaelic scholars John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw, this major project not only revives a beloved place but also honours a priceless legacy of Gaelic culture.

The logistics of restoring a historic house on a remote island are no small feat. Everything inside – from furniture and wallpaper to delicate painted surfaces and knick-knacks – had to be carefully cleaned, conserved and eventually returned to the correct place. Some items even had to be removed from the island entirely for their restoration. Structural repairs to withstand the Hebridean weather were essential. We stripped the two-storey rear wing of the house back to stone to make the west-facing wall watertight, and replaced floor and ceiling timbers that had been damaged by damp. We also created on-site archival facilities and even built a temporary contractor village to house tradespeople, given that Canna is more than a two-hour journey from the mainland – and very dependent on the weather.

This restoration marks the beginning of a new chapter in our ability to share Canna House’s remarkable archive. John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw dedicated their lives to collecting and preserving Gaelic music, folklore and language. Their work includes some 1,500 Gaelic folksongs, 350 folk tales, over 5,000 photographic negatives and 25 reels of film spanning 50 years of Gaelic culture on the islands of Canna, Barra, the Uists and Mingulay.

For the first time, a dedicated reading room will allow an archivist to complete a planned audit of the contents. This will lead to a two-year cataloguing project, which will significantly improve access to the archive, both for staff answering enquiries and researchers who wish to visit Canna House and engage with this extraordinary cultural resource.

We’re so excited to share this property with the public once more and grateful to all who made it possible.

A living room dressed with some mid-century and antique furniture. The walls are decorated with striped wallpaper, and there is a black fireplace in the centre of the room.

Canna House living room | image: Steven Gourlay

Ben Lawers 75

Helen Cole, Property Manager/Senior Ranger Naturalist, Ben Lawers NNR

For 75 years, the Trust has cared for Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve, a landscape of rare arctic-alpine plants, diverse wildlife and some of the most breathtaking mountain scenery in the UK.

But this remarkable place is under growing threat. Climate change, overgrazing and erosion are placing immense pressure on its fragile ecosystems. That’s why, in this anniversary year, we launched Ben Lawers 75, a campaign to raise £75,000 to help protect and restore this extraordinary reserve.

From restoring mountain willows and monitoring rare arctic-alpine plants to supporting our dedicated footpath team in their efforts to reduce erosion on the hills, we’ve advanced crucial conservation work across the estate.

This spring, we were proud to welcome two Rural Skills Modern Apprentices as part of a new initiative with the Heart of Scotland Forest Partnership. Over the next year, the apprentices will join us one week each month, gaining hands-on experience in habitat monitoring, forest management, visitor engagement and more. The rest of their time is shared with partners including Forestry and Land Scotland and Highland Perthshire Communities Land Trust, giving them a rare opportunity to work across multiple organisations and landscapes.

This apprenticeship programme is about more than skills; it’s about investing in the future. Rural land management expertise is in short supply, and programmes like this are vital to inspire and equip the next generation to care for Scotland’s natural heritage.

Your support makes this possible. Together, we’re not just protecting places like Ben Lawers: we’re passing on the knowledge and skills needed to ensure they flourish in the future.