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…

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…

Many different factors conspire to make the Scottish landscape as beautiful as it is, or for making any given walk particularly memorable. The different seasons, the colours, the quality of light, the wildlife, the list goes on. But few prompt walkers to wax quite so lyrical about the benefits of hillwalking as the cloud inversion – those joyous days when the cloud level is so low that the higher ground pokes up through it. Joyous, that is, for the lucky folk standing on the higher ground. For anyone standing on the lower ground it’s another matter entirely. Because in cold…

Scotland’s rugged west coast is, I would suggest, uniformly magnificent. And yet, as you travel through this amazing place there are some locations that rise above even that lofty baseline. Some are famous, most are not. And in the case of the nots, they’re often the kinds of places you unwittingly stumble upon while on your way to see something else. As a case in point, earlier this year I paid my first ever visit to the Isle of Mull. I’d heard plenty in advance about its history, its hills and its geology, so I already had a list of…

Bogs are hard to love. Indeed, if you hear the word ‘bog’ then what might spring to mind, other than the lavatory, is something that grips your boot and refuses to let it go as you step away. Or perhaps you instantly picture a place that is difficult to navigate through on a compass bearing because you can rarely walk in a straight line. Or perhaps, if you’ve ever been unlucky enough to actually fall into a bog, you imagine something that is very smelly indeed. Faced with such bad press it’s not surprising that bogs can be viewed rather…

Spending time outdoors in natural places is universally recognised as being good for both our physical health and our mental well-being. Getting children outdoors and exploring the natural world is in their best interest, but it is also in society’s best interest for a healthy, well-informed, environmentally-aware population. The onus is on parents and educators to try to ‘interpret’ the natural world for our kids, so that they can understand their place within it and recognise how vital its protection is. That can be as cheap and easy as making daisy chains, collecting conkers or blowing on dandelion clocks. Encourage…