Lindores Loch is a freshwater loch

Loch

Loch is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or a sea inlet. It has been anglicised as lough, although this is pronounced the same way as loch. Some lochs could also be called a firth, fjord, estuary, strait or bay...

 situated in North Fife

Fife

Fife is a council area and former county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire...

 in the Parish of Abdie. The Loch has for many years been used as a fishery and is well known for its abundant fish life. A curling

Curling

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a...

 pond is situated on the Northern shoreline and is nominally used by the Abdie Curling Club and Abdie ladies Curling Club. A speculative study suggests that the loch was created by glacial deposits from the surrounding Ochil Hills

Ochil Hills

The Ochil Hills is a range of hills in Scotland north of the Forth valley bordered by the towns of Stirling, Alloa, Kinross and Perth. The only major roads crossing the hills pass through Glen Devon/Glen Eagles and Glenfarg, the latter now largely replaced except for local traffic by the M90...

 at the end of the last ice-age. The water level and shoreline have changed over time due to roads, railway, sluice gate and farmland.

Natural history

Lindores Loch is a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 (SSSI) and is designated for the flora and fauna of its wetlands and open water habitats. Specifically its high diversity of pondweeds (potamogeton

Potamogeton

Potamogeton is a genus of aquatic, mostly freshwater, plants of the family Potamogetonaceae. Most are known by the common name pondweed, although many unrelated plants may be called pondweed, such as Canadian pondweed...

), large area of reed bed

Reed bed

Reed beds are natural habitats found in floodplains, waterlogged depressions andestuaries. Reed beds are part of a succession from young reed colonising open water or wet ground through a gradation of increasingly dry ground...

, wet woodland

Wet woodland

Wet woodland is a biodiversity habitat in the United Kingdom.This is a woodland that occurs on poorly drained or seasonally wet soils. They are typical of river valley, the surroundings of mires and raised bog, the transition zones between open water and drier ground, and beside small winding...

 and notable birds. There are also two rare species of water beetle recorded at this site.

Geography

The loch is nestled in the Ochil Hills between Woodmill Hill to the west and Dunboghill to the East and Kinnaird Hill to the North. The water stretches from the village of Lindores

Lindores

Lindores is a small village in Fife, Scotland, about 2 miles south-east of Newburgh. It is situated on the north-east shore of Lindores Loch, a 44 ha freshwater loch. A possible derivation of the name Lindores is 'church by the water'...

 southwards for a distance of 1.3 km. It is a shallow loch with a maximum depth of 3m.

History

The old Abdie Parish Church ruins are close to the north shoreline. The ruins of Inchrye House, a grand Victorian Gothic house to which estate the loch once belonged, lay to the East. The rail line between Perth

Perth, Scotland

Perth is a town and former city and royal burgh in central Scotland. Located on the banks of the River Tay, it is the administrative centre of Perth and Kinross council area and the historic county town of Perthshire...

 and Ladybank

Ladybank

Ladybank is a town and former burgh of Fife, Scotland. It is located about north of Edinburgh, southwest of Cupar, close to the River Eden. Its 2006 population was estimated at 1,582.-History:Prior to the 18th century, this area was mostly marshland...

 is located on the west shoreline. The loch was an important source of water for powering mills in the Lindores valley, where up to 13 mills of various types operated from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century.

Culture

The area near Lindores Loch is mentioned in Sir Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

's play Macduff's Cross:

'You do gaze—

Strangers are wont to do so—on the prospect.

Yon is the Tay, rolled down from Highland hills,

That rests his waves, after so rude a race,

In the fair plains of Gowrie.

—Further westward,

Proud Stirling rises.

—Yonder to the east

Dundee, the gift of God, and fair Montrose,

And still more northward, lie the ancient towers

Of Edzell.'

Many travel guides and books have mentioned the beauty of the area and loch:

'Lindores Loch is a beautiful sheet of water, nearly a mile in length. It is frequented by wild ducks, and abounds with perch and pike. The neighbouring scenery is picturesque.'

'...in this small spot nature has crowded together all that can delight the eye, and elevate the imagination.'