Last week I found myself accompanying fellow lifelong snow enthusiast Iain Cameron to Creag Meagaidh for a second time. Our first visit (and indeed our first meeting) had been back in October 2014 when we headed to Raeburn’s Gully, high up in Coire Ardair in search of an unusually long-lasting patch of snow. That encounter inspired me to write an article…
One of my earliest memories of interacting with the natural world involves those gaudy cheap fishing nets you used to be able to buy at seaside resorts. They were essentially just a length of bamboo cane with a brightly coloured bag-like net on the end – perfect for scooping up fish and whatever else took our fancy in those Cornish rockpools. But I didn’t use them for fish. I didn’t even use them on the coast. My brother and I would use them in our garden, 70 miles from the sea, to catch butterflies. I never actually wanted to keep…
A couple of weeks ago my boss phoned just as I was packing up to leave work for the day. She’d received a report from a park visitor who had found an owl chick sitting on one of our mountain bike trails, and was phoning to see if I knew what the general advice was regarding owl chicks found out of their nests. But I didn’t know. My acquisition of wildlife factoids that assist me as a ranger has developed principally on a ‘learn as you go’ basis. Any knowledge that my fusty old brain manages to retain about a…
The badger It’s dim. Though the days are getting longer the spring light is fading fast and I will soon be staring into darkness. I need to look to my right but I daren’t move my head, so I move only my eyes as I peer into the forest. I can feel two or three midges crawling across my forehead – hardly a plague but their insistent marching across my skin feels like an army. Normally I’d rub the midges away with an unconscious reflex swipe of the hand, but I can’t do that. All I can do is sit…
A couple of weeks ago I found myself sat in the Lochmaddy Hotel on North Uist, rain streaming down the windows, killing time before catching the ferry back to Skye. It was the final day of a four week jaunt around Scotland and, as inevitably happens when a journey comes to an end, I found myself reflecting on the highlights of the previous 28 days. I’d seen so much. Too much to recall in just one sitting but some notable experiences nonetheless stood out: exploring the cavernous space of Smoo Cave; standing below some of the tallest trees in the…
Our wild and far-flung places don’t come much wilder or more far-flung than Sandwood Bay, a mile-long sweep of sand just a few miles south of Cape Wrath in northwest Sutherland. 250 miles from the Central Belt, four miles from the nearest road, flanked by high cliffs and surrounded by upland blanket bog, Sandwood is the epitome of wild, the embodiment of remote. This isn’t somewhere that you happen upon, this is somewhere you plan to visit. And last week, like so many others who seek out wild places in order to feel revitalised and connected to something more fundamental…
Colour can be in short supply during the average Scottish winter. Whether it’s due to low cloud, mist or rain, or invariably all three at the same time, we spend much of the winter under a blanket of grey that drains anything bright and sharp from the landscape. Ours is a muted world made of different hues of grey, brown and green. This inevitably means that when something colourful does finally come along it stands out with all the subtlety of a nuclear explosion. Waking up after weeks of dreichness to find a sparkling blue sky in the morning is…
Shortly before midnight on 18th December I happened to glance at my weather station’s console. Its comforting green glow informed me that it was 11.1C outside. I did a double take, and then I had to step outside to check it wasn’t an error. Sure enough, it was insanely mild in the darkness, and the warm wind felt like a hairdryer on my face. It felt weird. It felt…..wrong. I checked my weather data from the last five years and, true enough, that night time temperature of 11.1C was higher than ANY temperature I’d recorded in any of the previous…
As a result of a pesky knee injury at the hands of Bidean nam Bian, my forays north have been few and far between lately. It’s five months since I last climbed a highland hill and because such trips form the mainstay of my articles for Walkhighlands, I admit I started to worry where my next piece would come from. Thankfully, there is a wonderful phenomenon in the writing world where inspiration hits you when you least expect it. Usually when you need it most, and often it’s from the most unlikely of places. In this instance….the cold, clinical, rain-soaked…
As both a wildlife enthusiast and snap-happy photographer I confess I have an innate desire of wanting to get as close to wildlife as possible. Or more accurately, as close as wildlife will allow me to get. I’m certainly not alone in wanting to do so either. How many of us have tried creeping up on a butterfly or have gone to a pond in search of tadpoles? How many of us have simply tried to edge closer to a hare, ptarmigan, golden plover or some either iconic species out on the hill, only to fail miserably as it scurries…