When the Borders Forest Trust bought the Carrifran valley in 2000, this rowan was very nearly the only tree standing in it. Centuries of grazing had stripped the glen bare to the tops and the rowan held on where nothing else had. Its photograph went onto the fundraising leaflet under the line 'Where one tree survives... a million trees will grow', and some 700,000 trees have gone in around it since. By the usual measures it is unremarkable. No source dates it more precisely than under a hundred years, nobody has recorded a girth, and in a hedgerow you would walk past it. What it has watched is the reason to come: a stripped valley turning back into native woodland from the inside, one planting season at a time, until the survivor on the poster stood inside a forest. Woodland Trust Scotland made it Scotland's Tree of the Year in 2020, and it was the UK entry in the 2021 European Tree of the Year, finishing eleventh. You need a car. The small Carrifran car park is signed off the A708 between Moffat and Selkirk, by the farm gate just west of a cattle grid, and a clear path runs up the valley from there. Access is open across the whole site, though the made paths are the sensible line, and dogs go on a lead from 1 April to 31 July for the nesting birds. Keep going and the same walk carries on up towards White Coomb.
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Carrifran Wildwood, Carrifran valley, Moffat Hills, Dumfries and Galloway
You can recognise it as an ordinary-looking rowan, unremarkable in size, standing out only because it was nearly the sole tree left in the valley before replanting began around it. It stands partway up the Carrifran valley path.
Free, open access woodland/valley run by the Borders Forest Trust. Small gated car park signed off the A708; a clear path runs up the valley from there, and there is a right to roam over the whole site (staying on established paths is advised). Dogs must be kept on a lead 1 April to 31 July for nesting birds. Not accessible by public transport; this is a car (or long walk/cycle) destination.
No public transport serves the site. By car via the A708 between Moffat and Selkirk; the small Carrifran Wildwood car park is signed off the road (look for the farm gate just west of a cattle grid). Moffat is the nearest town, roughly 10km away.
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Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.