This long weekend meeting (starting on Friday morning) aims to help the Recorder improve Atlas 2020 coverage in Fife, which is a moderately big county. We will be based in near Dunfermline which is a conveniently central base – especially for the under-recorded areas around the town and towards the western county boundary.   This area of Fife has surprisingly rich and varied habitats – with coastal habitats, lowland raised bogs, many lochs, woodland, farmland and moorland rising up to 400m in the Cleish Hills. So, many interesting habitats to explore!  Booking is essential.

Meeting Place:  Meet each morning at Halbeith Retail Park. To get there, enter KY11 4LP into your SatNav and follow the directions. 

Timing: Let’s meet at 10.00am on each of the three mornings beginning with 10.00 on Friday 7^th. Please let me know if you cannot make the meeting place on time to avoid an unnecessary wait for everybody.  My mobile phone number is 0791 7152580.  We can also meet up for a short debriefing session at 6pm just before dinner - and a chance to pass specimens around and ask for advice!

Plan: Every morning we will sort ourselves into small groups of threes or fours (one group per car) and head off to survey the target 1 x 1 km squares (monads), leaving excess cars behind in the car park. We will aim to survey monads within 2 x 2 km squares (tetrads). So, we will record everything in the first monad and everything new in subsequent monads.  (The very keen are welcome to reset their botanical clocks when going into new monads, but in the interests of maintaining sanity we are not asking for that!)

Evening Meals: It is always fun getting together after each day’s botanising. So, I have booked the Harvester in the Halbeith Retail Park (Postcode: KY11 4LP) at 6.30pm on the Friday & Saturday evenings. 

Equipment Checklist: here is a shortlist of some of things you should remember to bring. You should check the weather the night or morning before leaving home or your B&B and adjust accordingly!

• Boots
• Waterproofs
• Packed lunch
• Spare warm top (fleece or similar), hat and gloves?

• Sunglasses, sun hat, sun cream and lip sunblock?
• Mobile phone, camera, handlens, etc

Only if available

• OS Maps of the local area: OS Landranger (1:50,000) maps & OS Explorer (1:25k) maps

Insurance: Remember that, as usual on all BSBI field meetings, those attending do so at their own risk.

Cancellation: Please do let me know if you are no longer able to come (click contact event organiser below).