We finished the year to March with 223 Members and changed our Company Secretary/Solicitor from Douglas Graham in Inverness to Company Secretary, Ailsa Ritchie, Dunning and Solicitor Alastair Anderson, of Muthill whose firm is Johnston & MacKenzie, Glasgow.

Ailsa has looked into the ownership of the track at the Wellhill ( northeasterly ) end of the Wood and it is definitely ours. We have made real progress on the pavement from Romangate to the Wood, thanks to the school’s support. We also participated in the Community Council’s Information Open Day.

The DCT is not about the wood only; we were offered the piece of ground running alongside the burn, which has a path running from Well Road to Glenrossie House up past Pauly. We took advice and declined the chance of owning it because of the liabilities involved.

We have had some unfortunate incidents at Kincladie Wood with dumping of a large amount of garden refuse and also kitchen sewage bags. There has been damage caused by horse riding, the lighting of fires, litter such as bottles and cans being left, and with dog fouling. Also the incident with the lorry and the branch which damaged the new lay-by fence.

We were successful in our bid to the Forestry Commission and achieved £5,000 for projects in the wood. Our thanks goes to Phil Gordon for the work on the Feasibility Study and to Paul Cookson for the initial ground work. Two people connected with the school are now trained as Forestry Officers. The Forestry School over 6 weeks was a great success. The Bird Boxes were completed and put up, very worth while fund raisers, with some of the fledglings ringed.

The big Event of June 2006 was the Festival Weekend; all I will say, it was a lot of work for everyone involved but absolutely wonderful and a fantastic result. We were also granted an Awards for All Grant which subsidised the Marquee. Also a mention of the Splash Tickets that made over £2,400 thanks to Peter Syme of The Glebe.

We had the Pudding Club, followed by Jess Smith’s magical story telling in the Wood, then after the Festival Weekend, the Members Day at Corshellach, Glenfarg Accordian & Fiddle Club, 5th November Bonfire, The atmospheric Carol Evening, and also the Bodger in the wood just before the Forest School started

To all the volunteers, permissions given, the use of people houses, gardens and chapel, the givers of food, drink and all the hands that have helped at Events and all the help we have had in the wood… and to those that are now guiding us on our next phase. My grateful thanks.

To Malcolm Nixon for being our Webmaster; I was told this week by the Head of the Tayside Biodiversity we have the best and most informative community project website they had viewed.
We have so many forms to fill in and laws to follow I would like to thank every one
of the Directors, who have been with us throughout this year, for all their hard work in achieving our responsibilities. On that we are also grateful to Ailsa for keeping us on the right track To Carol Kinross who joined us this year to become our Minute Secretary a great help to us taking this on. To Jim Slater our Financial Advisor being in the village, advice is given quickly if you can catch him.

Now as agreed last year we paid our Benefactor £18,000, since then we have added another £8,000 which leaves us a balance of £19,000.

That’s everything up to March 2007.

Now from March to bring you up to date, but as you know we now have a Newsletter. By the way if you have any article for it please give it to us.

At long last we have Charity Status after all our extraordinary Meetings and now there is talk of having less accountancy for smaller charities like us. But we will just have to go along with the system at the moment. I have attended three OSCR meetings in Edinburgh & Glasgow on behalf of the DCT. We have had a great deal of work to do because of the Charity status but of course now, some of your memberships can be gift aided, even recovering tax for the last year, which helps us again; Jane Graham has the necessary forms.

Two of our Directors, Trevor Williams and Bill Howie have resigned, their work has been very valuable to us and I thank them both for this.

There is now a red dog poo bin sited at the wood very well used by responsible dog owners and emptied by the Council. There is further work having been done on the made up path for the disabled, which is as far as it is going. We had the Forth and Tay Disabled Ramblers here and they approve. This has all been done to Historic Scotland’s specifications.

The Bird Box Sponsors have been given an update. Blackford, Aberuthven, Auchterarder and Dunning schools had an Orienteering Day in the Wood.

Our Members Day was at Glenrossie House, not such good weather, but lovely atmosphere and we are most grateful to Ang and David.

We are at the moment looking into bringing red squirrels back into the wood. The in subject is Biodiversity; and we are taking this on board by the way. We have been given many leaflets on the subject. Margaret Dewar has given us 500 bulbs and they are being planted down the dump road by pupils of Dunning School. Pauline Silverman donated a load of beautiful, large flat sections of wood which we hope will be made into something rustic. Most of the Members who have made their opinions known and want the Wood to stay as natural as possible.

Now the big news is The Breathing Places Lottery Grant ( talked about on TV by Bill Oddie), for which we received £9,560, (£10,000 was the maximum) so we did rather well but as you will know this is all restricted and we have a list to let you see where we have to spend the money, all by next May, The Directors have taken this in hand and things are moving along as no doubt you can see with the proposed Car Park at the Wellhill end of the Wood. Councillor Bob Ellis, Chairman of Perth & Kinross Countryside Trust who gave us an excellent reference for this, visited last week. And under the capable hands of Penny Martin’s company with the help of Phil Gordon a Management Plan is in hand and of course Biodiversity including Fungi will be included.

Any suggestions for things in the Wood or moneymaking events please let us know.

Elspeth V. Pentland,
Chairman 2004/08.
September 2007