THE story in last week's Times about the company that is in charge of the old opencast site near the village is going to look at a number of moves to try and make it look a lot better than it is was really encouraging.

When you remember going back a few years there were some very impressive ideas on what the former ravaged ground would look like.

As it happened, lack of finance put that completely out of the picture and green hills have been what has arrived.

Now while that is not quite as jazzy as having water features and special pathways through the land, it is at least in better shape than the likes of Westfield near Ballingry which was simply abandoned once coaling had finished.

Your story said that the last stages of restoration has been completed, which has to be good news and that the site is designated in the new Fife Local Development Plan for mixed tourism and leisure.

Hargreaves seem to have said that they are to commence a series of surveys and feasibility studies to examine the potential to re-open Loch Fitty as a commercial fishery and say they have several parties interested in moving this forward.

So if we are going to see some really nice additional features on the rolling slopes that will probably just about do us, for to be honest we cannot really complain.

When you think about it, with Scottish Coal going out of business at a key moment in the restoration of the St Ninian's site, we could have been left like Westfield.

Mercifully we have not and I think Hargreaves deserve to take some credit for what has been achieved.

NINIAN,

Kelty.