Welcome in

Visitors are welcome here at all times of the year. Several gateways lead in to Tentsmuir Point from the easternmost road through Tentsmuir Forest. Access is also possible along the shore from the Forestry Commission’s Kinshaldy car park and along the foreshore from Tayport.

Both the seals and the many kinds of birds that use the area are vulnerable to disturbance. So it’s important not to let dogs roam off the lead in the reserve. The choice is simple: free-running dogs and disturbed, hard-to-watch, less numerous wildlife; or hours of scope for quiet enjoyment of relaxed creatures.

Growing point

At Tentsmuir, the mighty River Tay is one of the power sources giving unusual thrust for growth and change. The Tay disgorges more water than any other river in Britain. At peak flows, this can be the same as more than 2000 freshwater bathloads hitting the North Sea every second.

The sea, in turn, swirls its own currents and tides within the outrush from the Tay and the smaller River Eden. One spectacular fall-out of sediment from this watery push and tug is the Abertay Sands, which stretch eastward beyond the landward tip of Tentsmuir.

Abertay’s glistening curves and channels are fully revealed only at the lowest tides, but this several-kilometre-long sand system is a vital part of the whole reserve. It’s a haven for seals and birds and provides raw material for the growth of Tentsmuir’s land, in the form of sand transported by tides, then dried and shunted westward by winds. Grain upon grain, this adds to the foreshore, a tiny beginning of something huge.

True grit

Plants take up where the sea leaves off, helping to trap wind-blown sand, then bind it in their mesh of roots. Those in the vanguard of coast creation – such as sea rocket, lyme-grass and marram grass – have to be tough. Storms of sharp-edged sand grains; drenching salt spray; shortage of fresh water; temperatures that can hit desert-like day-time highs and chill night-time lows – these are all part of survival at this wild edge.

Inland from the foredunes and the yellow dunes (named for the amount of bare sand on them), the front line of sand-binding grasses gives way to an increasingly varied mix of plants. On grey dunes (named for their mat of vegetation), mosses and lichens are abundant, while the hollows on the lee side of the dunes hold even greater variety, including widespread, low-growing bushes of creeping willow.

Inland again, towards the forest edge, dune heathland with abundant crowberry and cross-leaved heath grows in the more acid conditions on the reserve’s longest established sands.

Road to forest, Finger to strides

You can get some measure of Tentsmuir’s awesome expansion by using a rod, the forest, a finger and some strides.

Some 8000 years ago, one of the wandering tribesfolk that used the area would have a shoreline close to where the Leuchars to Tayport road runs, several kilometres from the present coast.

Fast forward to the 12th century to find a monk who surveyed Tentsmuir as part of the St. Andrews Cathedral lands. He spoke of it as a kind of bandit country populated by ‘devils, bears and oxen’. In his time, the boundary between land and sea would have been deep within where the forest now stands.

By the early 1800s, the shore was close to the forest’s eastern edge. Then came the clearest time-marker of all in 1941, the Second World War installation of a line of large concrete blocks as defence againse possible enemy tank landings.

Since then, some of the blocks at the southern reserve edge have been overwhelmed by the sea. Elsewhere, much of the broad plain of the Great Slack separates them from the water, showing that Tentsmuir has grown by about five metres a year ever since.

That’s an astonishing increase. Think of it as being like a finger’s width each day and you’ll begin to get the picture. Take five paces seaward from the anti-tank block near the forest to imagine one year’s growth, then look to the coast for the idea really to sink in.

Pump up the value

Dune ‘slacks’ are hollows whose bottom sits close to the water table below. So the sand in them can be damp or hold shallow pools, adding further possibilities for plant richness. The Great Slack at Tentsmuir is a massive and superb example, where the floral show through spring and summer rings many colour changes.

Yellow flowers of bird’s-foot trefoil, pink petals of ragged-Robin and seaside centaury, violets living up to their name, a purpling of northern marsh orchids and the pure white of grass-of-Parnassus are some of the tones that make the dune grassland and wetland areas of the Great Slack zing. And above them and on them, many kinds of insects flit and crawl, including hundreds of species of beetles, butterflies such as common blue and grayling, and day-flying burnet moths.

One prominent feature of the Great Slack is a wind-driven pump. This helps to take water from part of the forest to keep the Slack flooded in winter as a boost for birds, plants and other wildlife.

The heavy team

Big, hairy and helpful – that’s clan style for the small herd of Highland cattle used to graze the area in summer. These Highlanders are on a mission – to keep the whole reserve free of tree cover, and so conserve its value for a wide range of wildlife. Sheltered by the forest, which was planted in the 1920s as a fairly recent episode in Tentsmuir’s long history, the more open dune areas can soon by invaded and shaded by seedling trees.

That’s why a major programme of tree and scrub removal has been carried out here in recent years. This has achieved the aim of restoring 95 per cent of the reserve to dune habitats – mainly dune grassland and heathland. The ginger-haired heavy team is helping the reserve managers to keep further tree and bush growth in check and so secure the recent gains.

Here’s looking at you

Together, the Tay and Eden esturaries have enormous value for wildlife and waders, especially between autumn and spring. That’s when thousands of geese such as pink-feet from Iceland, shorebirds such as bar-tailed godwits and grey plovers from Siberia and ducks including scoters from Scandinavia, flock and feed around Tentsmuir’s rim.

The vast flock of eiders that gathers in the outer part of the Tay between October and March is a star turn among this abundance of birdlife. It’s the largest gathering of these of these ducks in Britain and Ireland, and benefits from the mussels that grow on coarse gravels (including ballast dumped up to the 19th century) near the river mouth.

Impressive numbers of both grey and common seals also use the area throughout the year. The greys – sometimes as many as 2000 of them- like to haul – out on the Abertay Sands and the sandbank rear the southern sea fence. Up to several hundred commons use all the sandbanks and the southern foreshore.

This is a place of landscape wizardry.

The northern part of Tentsmuir is one of the fastest- growing parts of Scotland,while at the southern end the sea is making inroads plucking sand back to the deeps. The mix of growth and loss makes Tentsmuir a key site for studying processes that mould beaches and coasts.

Come to Tentsmuir and you’ll discover a domain of shape –shifts, a coast of changes.
Large- scale as the bulging of several kilometres of new ground into the sea over thousands of years, small as the jump and bounce of sand grains in a breeze.

Getting to Tentsmuir Point

Tentsmuir Point National Nature Reserve lies some 2.5 miles( 4kms) east of Tayport, or 1.5 miles (2.5kms) north of the Forestry Commission car park signposted Kinshaldy Beach,off the Tayport /Leuchars road (B945)

For more information, please contact:

Scottish Natural Heritage
Fetterdale Office
Tentsmuir Forest
By Tayport
Fife DD6 9PF
Tel: 01382 553704

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