Part 2 how had all this happened,
The area that is now called “The Goldenloch” which I knew as a farmer and was called the meadow, for in the summer the non water area grew a very rich variety of meadow grasses and flowers and supposedly some kind of wild orchid according to the Department of Agriculture, who set up the SSI classifications, a classification that I vermontly refused to let them slap on this land, and also unknown to me until about the year 2000 this area was referred to in the farm title deeds, as the waters of beryhoille and in a very early map interestingly “berryhoille laux” is on it, but no Lindores Loch, which is also metioned in our deeds as the source of il (eel) for the monks of Lindores Abbey, but I do know that Lindores Loch grew dramatically in size in or around the 1850s as the railway passed by it, and flooded a huge area, by putting in a slice to control the waters for all the mills and waterwheels which are on the Kiel burn, now why is the burn leading out of Lindores called this , well the oldest fish trap in the world supposedly? Is at the down side of Lindores, hidden from view, It is called the eel house, Look up Lindores eel house on Google,
Dated IA <> 16 87 IB (Query if lintel is original, but building
is 17th century). Rubble-built chamber with turfed barrel
vault and chamfered doorway built partly across pow with
rudimentary perforated sluice over remainder. Rudimentary
workings with perforated eel trap.
Lindores was mostly a bog land area, Lindores used to have an island it the middle which supposedly people lived on, and there was also a crannock settlement at an area which is next to the main road, it was allegedly no more that a few feet deep and that can be borne out by the fact that as kids, we used to swim over it, and our feet often touched the ground, also there used to be hundreds of poles sticking up, and barbed wire or rather the remains off, at they had been put in during the war, as Lindores Loch lay in an area that was deemed to be a stop line, hence the reason there are hundreds of concrete blocks “anti tank cubes” all over the place in fields, ive buried a few, one day some poor guy will dig up hundreds in a field and wonder what the hell was this all about, also this area has the most amazing amount of pill boxes many are still intact, but very cleverly hidden, even some of the white settlers from the south that have been hear for quite a few years walk past them with their dogs and don’t realise what they are, Before I go back to the Goldenloch and how it got its name, the water that runs from the Goldenloch travels to Lindores, it goes down a type of weir which I call a monk, because that’s what I was told it was called, into a huge drain that leads into a tunnel, now this is interesting, very few people know about this tunnel, as it was found by myself and my tractor man, behind a very rotten old door, it is I assume a drainage tunnel, but it does not exist on any maps or on any reference, I have walked up it a few times but it’s a bit scary as its really old, anyway the water as it comes out this tunnel turns into a burn known locally as the priests burn, and according to our deeds, it was all put in place in and about the 1700s by Irish labourers, to drain the beryhoille laux for the purpose of growing beetraw “red beetroot” this by Royal proclamation for the Royals staying in the nearby Falkland Palace, I once investigated this years ago and was told that long before Barmoral, which was a Queen Victoria thing, the Kings and Queens when visiting Scotland stayed in Falkland Palace and went hunting for wild boar, as there was non left in England, they had cut down most of the forests to build ships to fight the Spanish and the boar population had become extinct, anyway the boar that they killed in the forest of the Houf “ Howe of Fife” were slowly cooked in red beetroot this one can only assume was the recipe of some ancient Gordon Ramsay.
Anyways back to this area of land, now flooded, and due to get its first load of fish, from Iain Christie of the fishery SandyNowes nr Bridge of Earn, Iain was a friend of my father and he had a huge water problem {not enough} I went along and helped him put in a borehole, as we had put one in at the farm, the first well hit nothing and he didn’t want to spend anymore money, drilling another, but we coaxed him and would you believe it we hit an artesian spring at 90 ft, and the water just bubbled out the ground, now having been involved in quite a few boreholes I had never seen that before, Iain being a real gent gave us our first two loads of fish for free, See Picture, and they were all around the 1.5lb mark, biggies in those days, My parents lived in a house that we built on the Farm and it was called Goldenhill House after the hill in front of them which is called Goldenhill, the last hill in the range of hills known as the Ochill hills, About the Ochil Hills once a range of hills drops bellow 600ft it stops being a range, so that’s where the name comes from, nothing fancy, just a name that suits the area. Now from dads diary the first person to pay for fishing and catch, killing three, for the pricy sum of £12, was a gent by the name of Joe Killca, a veteran war pole, who came here for years on his motorbike, and on his death he left me trees and raspberries’ to plant, they are still there to this day, Joe was known by everyone and was an expert at catching fish, he actually went on to teach, now I am not sure if he is still a Scottish Champion fisher but he was, I will find out, We live at Berryhill Farm, which was a traditional family farm and as such it prospered in the 70s and 80s it was BSE that nailed it for us, as farmers, remember that nutter Prof Lacy, who predicted that if we all kept eating meat, we would be all dead in a year, or walking trailing our feet, whilst slavering down our fronts, BBC News | FORUM | Professor Richard Lacey quizzed well I had an organic suckler cow heard of 160 cows, all due to calf, and 150 year old calves and over 100 fat cattle, ready to go for slaughter, on a contact to Wm Low as organic beef, talk about all your eggs in one basket, all this was worth a small fortune to me and guess what nobody wanted any, Wm Low just waked away, it was a complete Zero, so we sold the farm to pay the debt, The Royal Bank of Scotland in my opinion deserve to go down, they gave me one month to pay back my overdraft, I would like them to pay back to us all now, in one month, what they owe us, I DID IT, and so I took over the loch from my parents and am still here, I love it and am very proud of it, its good fun but boy its hard work, I am sure some anglers wish I wasn’t here though not all are good guys, but like them over the years we all change and its not always about catching fish its about enjoying your days fishing.