2014 Annual Gathering: Caol Àcain, Skye

Photo - Skye landscape

This year’s theme was:

Restoring the Land and the People

The Reforesting Scotland Annual Gathering 2014 was held at Kyleakin Village Hall, Skye, on the first weekend in October, Friday 3rd October to Sunday 5th October.

The 2014 Gathering was our best-attended in a long time, with around 75 people gathering together to find out what is going on in this dramatic corner of Scotland. We began as usual with the Buildings Tour, seeing cool low-impact structures at Anam Cara, a super-insulated Passive House at Culbokie and an amazing factory that builds very low-energy, high-wood buildings in sections that are then put together on site in hours.

Arriving on Skye, we found a varied programme including visits to some very ambitious community woodland sites, a timber-milling demo, a look at Gaelic in the environment and even a tune on a set of small pipes made from the dreaded rhododendron. Topics up for discussion included deer and the native woods survey, crofter forestry, the nature of wildness and the way forward after the referendum.

Next year we’ll do it all again in a different place: the date for your diary is Friday 2nd to Sunday 4th October 2015.