Arbigland Estate (Dumfries)

“With its outstanding natural beauty and rich diversity of wildlife” the Arbigland estate “forms part of the Nith Estuary Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Upper Solway Special Site of Scientific Interest (SSI).” A successful farming business, available for film location work, and running a series of B&Bs, Arbigland – an emailer who stayed there tells us – “advertises itself as a haven for nature.” Its logo is a Goshawk, it boasts the birds found there, and does indeed appear great for wildlife. Why then, our emailer asks, did they have to “suffer the awful sight and sound of a pack of foxhounds being exercised by a fellow on horseback.” That will be because Major Jamie Blackett who owns the estate has for more than a decade been very connected with the Dumfriesshire and Stewartry Hunt, whose hounds are kenneled just around the corner! Oddly that doesn’t seem to be mentioned on the estate website at all (which is why websites like this have had to be built). Nor can we find any mention of the shooting that takes place on the estate in the winter, though GunsOnPegs states that from late October through January, Arbigland offers “good mixed bags to include Pheasant, Partridge, Duck, Snipe, Rabbit, Hares and possibly Geese.” Geese? That can’t be right surely, when Arbigland specifically says “We are participating in a goose tracking study and our geese can now be followed on their migration via their electronic trackers”. If that is the case, some of that migration tracking could be awfully short: ie ‘arrived, shot dead, didn’t leave again’