Papple Steading: Papple Wood and the Whittinghame Water

Papple Steading is a beautiful gothic-style farm steading just outside of the fairytale village of Garvald, which is just approaching the finishing line of an epic renovation project to restore it to its former glory, though rather than housing a team of horses as in the olden days, it will provide top-end conferencing facilities and space for corporate or recreational retreats, inclusive of high standards of self-catering accommodation. Part of its attraction are the areas of outside space manged as part of the estate- these are open to members of the public, and their website implies that they welcome visitors who are not necessarily involved directly with activities at the Steading- we certainly found this to be the case in practice too, we were lucky enough to ‘bump into’ the owner on our first visit to the Steading, and he could not have been more welcoming and informative. I had worried that we might feel uncomfortable, as if we were trespassing, but that was not the case at all.

Parking Spot- Papple Steading can be seen in the background

Google Maps will take you directly to Papple Steading, although at the time of writing, the main farm building was still under active renovation work, and much of the area was cordoned off for workmen, including what will presumably be an area designated for parking. As you approach the buildings down a straight road, the entrance to ‘Papple Wood’ can be spotted as a labelled gap in the wall on your right. We parked close to the entrance, ensuring to keep off the grass verge but still allowing space for larger vehicles to pass by. ‘Papple Wood’ is small but absolutely magical! Stepping through the gap into the wall feels like stepping straight into Narnia, it is actually hard to imagine that you were ever on a road at all. Nestled amongst acres of bluebells, and strikingly positioned with a backdrop of the stunning mansion farmhouse, is one of the large hand-painted hares that once graced the streets and parks of North Berwick as part of a pop-up sculpture trail a couple of years ago, later auctioned off for a local charity (if you care to read my write up of North Berwick Nature Park you will see how I came to own a tiny share in one of them). We as a family, enjoyed that hare trail immensely so it was lovely to stumble across one ‘in the wild!’.

Also in this area, is a child’s swing set and a cute wooden picnic table where Toddles, much to our annoyance at 10.30am, insisted on having his picnic ‘lunch’ before we had even begun our walk. From here, the woodland can be explored in a bit of a loop, just behind the wall to the right of the table you can follow and overgrown path around and then either down some wooden steps to a small bridge over a burn, or continue around the top as we did, to a small open ‘hut’, similar to a summer house, with a large viewing window overlooking the woods.

Swing seats- the path we took was to the back of this photograph and round to the left

The path continues to run along the inside of a large wall before turning left and naturally leading you down towards another small bridge. There are some fun log ‘stepping stones’ to play on here too. It is just a really lovely little bit of woodland, that we enjoyed all to ourselves, with only the sounds of the babbling brook and chorus of birdsong to keep us company. The path winds back up the hill towards your starting point at the hare, past a realistic wooden sculpture of a badger who is just the perfect height for a wee stroke before you head back up and out of the woods the way you came in.

For a quick cuddle for the badger, and then back out…

This is not all there is to do here though, there are plenty of other areas to explore on foot around Papple Steading. On our first day of exploring here, we headed right and back up through the steading itself, continuing straight past the self-catering cottages to the end where you will find a newly planted and well maintained mini-orchard in front of a walled farmers field, which on our visit was full of bright yellow oil seed rape, the floral smell strong enough to induce the mildest hay-fever sufferer towards a sneezy fit, but beautiful none the less!

Oil seed rape as far as the eye can see!

Follow the path through the mini orchard and right in the bottom left hand corner, where the field fence meets a wall is a tiny tumble-down gap that leads straight into a new woodland patch. You are almost immediately presented with the decision to head left or right, we headed right and followed the gnarly, muddy path downhill past a cute stick ‘den’ and over a fallen tree. After a couple of minutes the path opens up to a huge, grassy plateau, through which runs the Whittinghame Water, a wide stream at this point, almost completely hidden from view behind a plethora of wild flowers. Turning left, this open grassy space follows the river for as long as we had time to follow it.

A hundred yards or so along, we passed a huge redwood tree at the edge of the woodland, probably planted long ago as a display of wealth towards the estate it once inhabited, however many years later, it is clearly thriving in this unnatural habitat and was honestly a joy to behold.

A little further along, a large deer crossed our path and on sight of us, panicked and ran into the river. We never saw it again but the water is shallow and I am certain it darted out the other side and away into the dense forestry to our right. Also, around this area we followed a short 4x4 track down to a ford across the river, not sure it is one I would fancy even in a 4x4, the river bank is very rocky and must make for a bumpy ride! Too deep for us to cross on foot, so after throwing in a few stones and admiring the wildflowers up close, we trundled on along the bank, Toddles now firmly established on his Dad’s shoulders.

Around this point, the air began to fill with the heavy aroma of garlic and the woodland bank to our left turned white. This floral carpet soon spilled down the bank and into the plateau- I have honestly never seen so much wild garlic in all my life! Naturally, I foraged some leaves which I later chopped with chilli flakes and olive oil to create a lovely drizzle, just perfect on poached eggs! This adhoc foraging session marked a natural return point for our walk and we turned-tail and headed back to the van exactly the way we had come. I have it on good authority from a chatty local that we were fortunate enough to bump into on the way back, that you can in fact, cross the river a little further up and return via the other side for a longer, circular walk. So we will be keeping that in mind for next time. My guess is that the full circular would be just over 3 miles or so, we probably only rambled about a mile out and a mile back.

It was on our arrival back at Papple Steading where we had a lovely conversation with an older gentleman who was strimming the lawn outside of the main farmhouse (I had my suspicions at the time that he was the owner though he never admitted it to us, a quick scan of their website confirms my hunch was correct!), what he did do was passionately enthuse about the buildings around us, telling us all about the history of the Steading and the future that is planned for it. He was incredibly welcoming and friendly, and I got the impression that I would be doing him a favour by spreading the word about his shiny hidden gem… which incidentally has one more jewel in it’s crown!

Just 100m or so from Papple Wood, on a separate plot of land also owned by the estate, is a huge ‘purpose’-planted wildflower meadow. Believed by the owner to be the largest in East Lothian (although I personally think North Berwick Nature Park might give it a run for its money…) it has been quietly attracting ecologists and nature-lovers alike for a couple of years now. Unfortunately, we were just a little early for meadow season on our visit, but I have it on my very urgent ‘to-explore’ list so do watch this space for my photographic review of that!

Aberlady Bay Nature Reseve (& our local submarines)