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The Pentlands Regional Park
The Local Place Plan aims to deliver a safe, well-connected and low-impact active access corridor between Balerno and the Pentlands, while safeguarding the landscape, biodiversity and rural character that make the area distinctive. The Pentland Hills Regional Park is a scenic 10,000-hectare landscape southwest of Edinburgh, offering 100km of maintained trails for hiking, biking, and riding across 35 square miles of hills. Three local authorities cover the Park, which is a mixture of publicly-owned land (such as Hillend, Bonaly, and Harlaw), and private land used for farming and sport shooting. Reservoirs dot the landscape, providing homes for many birds and mammals. The Pentland Hills form one of Balerno’s defining landscape assets and are highly valued by residents for walking, cycling, informal recreation, wildlife, scenery and wellbeing. The Harlaw Reservoir and Threipmuir Reservoir area functions as an important gateway between Balerno and the wider Pentlands. Consultation responses show strong support for improving access to the Pentlands, particularly through safer off-road walking and cycling links, better path quality, clearer wayfinding and modest visitor facilities. At the same time, respondents consistently emphasised that the Pentlands’ open landscape, rural character, biodiversity and tranquillity should be protected from overdevelopment. |
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