I recently found myself stuck between a week’s holiday in Argyll and a week’s holiday in Glen Cannich. Between getting kicked out of one cottage and being able to check in to the next were seven long (and very soggy) hours. Factor in a 3.5hr drive and an hour faffing about in a Fort William supermarket and I’d be left with about 3 hours to kill. Now, if you’re an outdoorsy person then killing three hours on the west coast is unlikely to be a chore or a challenge. You’re spoilt for choice, but I really wanted to continue the…

Enjoy forest bathing but don’t know your mountain ash from your downy birch? Never fear – fellow botanical ignoramus David Lintern has a beginner’s guide. Over the summer, we went camping with the kids on the moors, pitching up for a couple of days near a small burn. After a brief but rigorous interrogation that any parent will recognise, I realised I had no clue what the slightly scrappy looking trees that lined the banks were. It’s embarrassing to admit, but no surprise really – I grew up surrounded by bricks and concrete, far from where I stay now, and…

Iain Cameron has been fascinated by ice and snow since the age of nine. In this extract from his book The Vanishing Ice, Iain describes an expedition to seek out the elusive snow patches that remain well into summer in the Scottish mountains as little-seen relics of the Ice Age. The bulk of Braeriach is immense. Apart from Ben Nevis, its only possible rival, the Cairngorms’ second-highest hill has no British equal in terms of complexity or majesty. Its name, translated into English as ‘the brindled upland’, understates its character significantly. There may be other hills in Scotland that are,…

Polly Pullar has had a passion for red squirrels since childhood. As a wildlife rehabilitator, she knows the squirrel on a profoundly personal level and has hand-reared numerous litters of orphan kits, eventually returning them to the wild. As her new book A Scurry of Squirrels is published next week, she tells us of the charming rodent’s fight for survival. Perhaps it may come as a surprise that until 1981 when the red squirrel received legal protection, it was still legal to cull it. I certainly find it hard to imagine now that we have raised this enchanting little rodent…

In early June, a team of courageous Cairngorms Connect partners and volunteers carried 3,000 downy willow saplings into the Cairngorm Mountains. This small species of native willow tree is specially adapted for life in the extreme climate of the Cairngorm mountains but sadly, is struggling to survive. Through a momentous team effort, this rare shrub is being thrown a lifeline, thanks to local volunteers, Cairngorms Connect, Trees for Life and the Cairngorms National Park Authority. Cairngorms Connect Communications and Involvement Manager, Sydney Henderson, describes the epic journey… The day began at the Cairn Gorm Ski Centre car park, and as…

Generally speaking, we in Scotland live in a quiet corner of the world. Our volcanoes are long extinct and there’s not been a major landscaping event since the glacial ice retreated. Sure, the earth shakes from time to time, and the turbulent atmosphere occasionally rattles our homes, but for the most part we live on pretty solid ground. We can therefore be forgiven for looking at our landscapes with a comforting sense of permanence. This is how it has always been, and this is how it will always be. Scotland is timeless. Scotland is forever. It’s an illusion of course,…