Heritage and nature

The parks’ landscape past and present has an amazing story to tell. Over the last 10,000 years wild woodlands and freshwater lochs, populated by wolves, deer, and waterfowl and visited by nomadic hunter-gatherers, gave way to a man-made environment of farmland and grand estates. Industries arrived, followed by new housing, businesses and roads. Natural habitats disappeared or changed – but nature adapts, and with the decline of heavy industry has once again started to reclaim these lands.