Cameron McNeish examines the lessons he has learned from Nan Shepherd’s writings NAN SHEPHERD, the woman-on-the-five-pound-note, was a reasonably successful novelist and poet but her work as a ‘geopoet’, if I may use such a term, has been widely acclaimed by literature experts and academics alike, as well as by those of us who love the hills. The focus of that work, a slim volume called The Living Mountain has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, championed by respected writers like Robert MacFarlane and others. Now I’m not an expert in literature and I’m certainly not an academic, but I am a writer and a…

Walkhighlands regular contributor David Lintern has written the first complete guide to mainland Britain’s big hill running Rounds –
– part guidebook, part social history. Here, he focuses on the man and the story behind the Scottish Round.

Since re-locating to the Highlands six years ago, I’ve made hundreds of journeys up and down the A9 and the Highland Main Line, to keep up with family and friends in Perth and Edinburgh, and to honour work commitments in the Central Belt. I nearly always tackle the journey in one go, setting the cruise control if travelling by car, or loading up my laptop on the train, focused on getting to my destination with as few interruptions as possible. As I mentioned in my last article, setting aside free time for myself has become something of a challenge over…

In my last column I wrote about my innate urge to collect natural objects and my growing unease with how that hobby sits within the whole ‘leave no trace’ ethos. The question I considered was an ethical ‘should I?’, but in this column I’m considering a different question – a very matter-of-fact ‘can I?’ Collecting natural ‘stuff’ and even taking photos might seem the most inconsequential of pursuits, but it isn’t as straight-forward as you might think. Some things might need landowner permission before you remove them. Other things are generally okay to take but only if you are sparing…

It doesn’t matter how you get there or what you call yourself, the hills don’t care. David Lintern escapes the tyranny of team sports and goes for a jog up a ridge. A few years ago you’d have never caught me doing it. I used to run a bit in secondary school, but only as a way of getting out of games. We’d be allowed off school grounds to run around Shirley hills, but we ran only the pavements and not into the woods themselves. We were on a prescribed route. I tolerated it, but it was mostly an escape…

The summer of 2018 was long, hot and record-breaking, yet I spent most of it stuck indoors catching up on a huge backlog of work. I can’t help but feel that I’m entitled to a heat wave again this year, now that I’m in a position to enjoy it. So far, however, the season isn’t living up to expectations. The solstice is almost upon us, yet I find myself waiting for summer to begin. The winter months are long and arduous here in the north east Highlands. Consequently, there is a certain amount of pressure to make the most of…

I come from a family of hoarders, and much of my childhood was spent slavishly furthering that great tradition – toy buses, coins, Dandy comics, badges, postcards, stamps, those utterly useless wee sheathed pens you used to get at every visitor attraction across the land, and much more besides. Thankfully, unless you count Munro-bagging as collecting (it’s difficult to take a mountain home thank goodness!), my urge to collect dissipated into my teenage years and I naively assumed my collecting days were long behind me. But 30 years later, when I clean the inside of my car before taking it…