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Hello and thank you very much for downloading the Scotland Outdoors podcast.

I'm Mark Stephen. He's Ewan McElwreath and we're standing here on a gentle rain today.

The soft, refreshing rain of a Scottish spring.

Actually, the past few days have been as sunny and as blue sky as this isn't today. But even today, you know, the leaves, there's a vibrancy in the colour coming off the trees and things like that. The grass, you just get the feeling you can hear it grow. It's going to go. Here we go. Yes, it's fantastic. It really is. I don't, this year more than any. I've just found the spring is just so

refreshing and absorbing the colours and it's great. In terms of land use, you know, obviously

we've got farms. Farms could be any size from really quite small to really quite big. But Crofts,

the very name Croft in Scotland tends to suggest that it's like a farming use, but it's smaller scale.

Have you ever wondered why you don't see trees on crops?

You know, this is a question I've even thought about before, but you're right.

You don't tend to associate trees with crofts.

Well, crofts certainly, you know, across the west of Scotland and in the western

aisles of Scotland.

I mean, that's where people tend to think crofting areas exist, but they exist all across

the highlands of Scotland and even into the north-east of Scotland.

But apparently, and I didn't know this, historically crofters didn't have the right to plant

trees.

But that legacy is changing.

...