Jackie Baxter, a keen hill bagger, wild camper and lover of the outdoors, describes her struggle after contracting Covid-19 at the age of 30. It’s early March 2020 and I’m plodding my way along a track in the Borders, exhausted and out of breath This seems a bit odd given that the gradient is virtually flat, I’m walking slowly and I’m used to long days in the outdoors. Putting it down to an “off” day, I push myself through the rest of the walk, getting more and more exhausted with every step and let Malky, my other half, drive home.…

The mountains in winter are both exciting and dangerous. David Lintern takes a look at what happens in our heads when we’re lost in the moment outdoors – whether we are ‘beginners’ or ‘experts’. A couple of months ago I had an accident in my boat on the River Findhorn. My friend Debra and I had enjoyed a glorious afternoon paddling under a bluebird sky flanked by broadleaf trees in full autumn psychedelia. We’d paddled all the rapids we’d set out to, bathed in the blissful tranquillity of the flat stretches in-between and finished earlier than planned. It was just…

As wintry conditions develop on the hills, we put questions from Walkhighlands users to Scottish Avalanche Information Service co-ordinator and senior forecaster for the Cairngorms, Mark Diggins. 1. How many avalanches are there in Scotland a year involving walkers and what are the most common causes? During last winter 2019/20, 27 avalanches were human triggered – this basically means that they were set off by people who were traveling in avalanche start zones in avalanche terrain (see diagram below) walkers are equally susceptible in terms of entering this type of terrain when following paths that are covered by snow. For…

Cameron McNeish’s new book, Come by the Hills, is published later this month, following on from the success of his memoir, There’s Always the Hills . In this extract, Cameron delves into the history and legends of one of Scotland’s most beautiful glens. IT was Sir Walter Scott who first described Glen Lyon in the above terms and my old mentor Tom Weir was fond of using the same alliteration to describe this 34-mile long glen of highland Perthshire. He often told me Glen Lyon was his favourite glen and for a man who knew Scotland like few others that…

A new book by Kerri Andrews, Wanderers examines the history of female walking by looking at ten women who, over the past three hundred years, have found walking essential to their lives.  In a series of intimate portraits, Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson’s daughter Elizabeth Carter – who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England – to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed. For each, walking was integral, whether it was rambling for miles across the Highlands, like Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, or pacing novels into being, as Virginia…