Walk at Hirsel

We have many walks for you to enjoy...

While the Hirsel House is not open to the public, during all seasons of the year, the grounds have much to offer the visitor who values the peace and ever changing beauty of the countryside.

Today the Estate covers some 3,000 acres and is run as a commercial farming and forestry enterprise.

There are five colour coded walks, which take you along a variety of routes through the Estate. One takes you by the Hirsel lake, which is one of the largest manmade expanses of water in the area and provides a home to geese, swans, moorhens, coots, ducks and grebes. There is a hide situated on the bank of the lake for the avid birdwatcher to use. On the Estate map of 1760, the area of lake was shown as a moss. Soon after this it was excavated and the resulting body of water was stocked with pike. These were fished out in the 1920s and the lake is now filled with eels and perch.

Another walk takes you to the famous Dundock Wood with its kaleidoscopic colouring and breathtaking scents from the collection of rhododendron and azalea's, this wood being at its best in May and June. The wood is perhaps the most bizarre part of the Estate. A severe storm on the night of 14th October 1881 resulted in the destruction of an area of woodland next to the Greenlaw Road. A family member suggested that the now largely bare area might look good planted with rhododendrons. Undaunted by the prospect of planting acid loving plants into an alkaline soil, the plan went ahead. To overcome the soil problem, peat was imported from the Bonkyl Estate, then owned by the Home family, involving endless 24 hour round trips with horses and carts. This painstaking process took some time but was well worth it.