Help us record the amazing wildlife of the hills
The Bathgate Hills provide an amazing habitat for local wildlife. Many plants and animals make their homes in the wonderful variety of hills, valleys, lochs, trees, forests and land. We’d like to begin to record what amazing wildlife lives in the hills, without disturbing them, and would love your help! It would be great if …
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Working with HES at Cairnpapple
We have been speaking to Historic Environment Scotland and agreed we will give some help thinning the Rosebay Willow Herb. It’s lovely in small amounts but risks taking over. Thinning it will help make space for other wild flowers, heathers and blaeberries. The plants are at just the right stage to easily remove – big enough …
We have won funding for a Storytelling Day in October!
The Bathgate Hills Venture is very excited to announce that we have been awarded funding from The Year of Stories and we will be bringing “Stories of the Bathgate Hills: a Celebration of the Voices of People and Place” to various locations across Bathgate, Linlithgow and Torphichen on 9th October 2022. This day of …
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Our Chapel Well Garden ideas have been selected!
West Lothian residents were asked, via Community Choices, to help influence the future work of the council’s Grounds Maintenance service. The grounds maintenance service for open spaces, parks, sports facilities, cemeteries, roadside verges and country parks includes cyclical activities such as grass cutting, weed spraying, shrub bed maintenance and hedge cutting. A Community Choices process was …
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Imbolc at Cairnpapple
‘From the ashes a fire shall be woken,A light from the shadows shall spring…’ J.R.R. Tolkein We are going to mark each of the seasonal festivals on the calendar this year. This first one – the Celtic festival of Imbolc – will be an informal and relaxed gathering, just to find our feet as the winter recedes …
2021 Round Up
As we approach the end of 2021, and as a very newly constituted SCIO, we thought we would share our progress this year and our ideas for 2022. As a charity we are now in a much stronger position to apply for grants and drive projects forward. Our beginnings Looking back to our beginnings, we …
Bathgate Hills Venture becomes a registered charity!
We are delighted to report that we are now a fully constituted charity registered with OSCR. We have also set up a charity bank account. Both of these things mean we can now apply for funding to undertake the project work that has been taking shape during our various 2021 lockdowns. Fingers crossed things are …
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Chapel Well Garden has a new flower bed
Bathgate’s lovely Chapel Well Garden has it’s new flower bed. Big thanks to Enterprise Bathgate in Bloom for the plants and our volunteers for all the digging and planting. As we move into Autumn we’ll swap these bedding plants for sensory ones, smelly lavender, useful herbs, interesting furry plants etc. We hope the garden will be …
Bathgate Hills website is set up
As part of the Bathgate Hills Venture we have produced this Work in Progress website where we can share useful information about the Bathgate Hills. This website in time will become a good reference point to find out about history of the hills and also useful information if you plan to venture to the Bathgate …
Summary of Aims
We have a five year plan for how we would like to raise awareness of the incredible asset we all have on our doorstep. You can read about it here.
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