Features

Back to the land

Posted on January 30, 2018 by David Lintern

David Lintern visits a 21st century croft in the Cairngorms, and comes away with free range eggs and hope for the future. Just off the road to Tomintoul over the Cromdale Hills, there’s a small wooden bungalow and a couple of outbuildings that have seen better days. When my own family were looking to move to the Highlands, we looked at this property. It came with a lot of land; more than we had the capacity or know-how to manage properly… but since then I’m very glad to say it’s been bought by two women who really do know what…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

January Blues – the call of the north

Posted on January 20, 2018 by Linda Cracknell

I write this on ‘Blue Monday’, the day associated with winter doldrums, when holiday companies prey upon our sense of daylight deprivation, lack of exercise, divorce from life ‘out there’. It’s when I feel most like hibernating, so it was perhaps contrary to choose this time of year to travel 250 miles further north from my home in Perthshire’s heartlands. In Orkney this is the season of upended goalposts when empty frames stand on pavements as their swinging coffee signs are torn away by gales to announce a hiatus in hospitality. Days are defined by their extreme shortness. The sky…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Exploring the Celtic Rainforest

Posted on January 19, 2018 by Ben Dolphin

A bit of rebranding works wonders for the underappreciated. Back in my bagging days the idea of spending more than an hour roaming a squelchy woodland would have been a complete anathema to me. Not that I didn’t appreciate woodland or forest at the time, mind. I always enjoyed passing through them but they were for just that – thoroughfares on my way to a Munro rather than being destinations in themselves. Times have clearly changed, because a couple of months ago I deliberately spent six soggy but wonderful hours exploring the exceedingly mossy interior of Ariundle National Nature Reserve,…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Our Wonderful Access Legislation That Almost Wasn’t

Posted on January 14, 2018 by Cameron McNeish

Cameron McNeish looks back at an unlikely event that ensured the success of our much lauded Scottish access legislation. ACCESS campaigners in Scotland have been celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, probably the most significant piece of legislation to affect all those who enjoy Scotland’s countryside. The Act secured the traditional rights and freedoms of all of us in Scotland to access land, coast and inland water, provided we do so responsibly. An accompanying code of practice, the Scottish Access Code, sets out those responsibilities for access users and land managers alike. Most hillwalkers are…

Posted in Access issues, Features, Magazine

North to the Future

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Karen Thorburn

I walked through Edinburgh’s West End after yet another late night in the office. First one in and last one out again. On crossing Shandwick Place, I kept my head down and avoided eye contact with other pedestrians but allowed myself sideways glances into bustling restaurants, brightly lit with festive decorations and bursting with office workers enjoying Christmas parties. The city around me was alive and buzzing yet I no longer felt a part of it. My Christmas was effectively cancelled by the deadline looming before me at work and the pressure to deliver on schedule. Any free time I…

Posted in Features, Magazine

This year…

Posted on January 2, 2018 by Helen Webster

Will this be the year you get out more and really explore Scotland on foot? Here’s our wee promo video to encourage more folk to get their boots on, get fit and healthy and discover the outdoors in 2018; help spread the message by sharing if you wish!

Posted in Features, Magazine, Our picks

The Glen

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Peter Cairns

My eye is drawn by the tiny green-headed pines poking their heads nervously above the heather, like prey wary of predator. It’s not that pines are unusual in Scotland but young pines, or at least those growing in such profusion, are conspicuous in a wider landscape largely bereft of young trees. These tentative pioneers are the building blocks for a future forest. Secreted away in the southwestern corner of the Cairngorms, the rampaging waters of the River Feshie carve an ever-shifting channel, dynamic and unlawful, with no respect for property or boundaries. Geriatric trees, partly submerged in sand and gravel,…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature, Photography

Consulting on Wolves

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Cameron McNeish

A London-based company is currently consulting with stakeholders on the feasibility of creating a Highland Wilderness Reserve for the release of wolves. Cameron McNeish knows who is behind it. HE’S back again. Every so often the millionaire owner of Alladale Estate in Sutherland invites a metropolitan journalist to his luxury hotel near Ardgay, wines and dines them, and feeds them his version of re-wilding. In particular he offers a romantic story of re-introducing wolves into Scotland. This normally results in an emotive feature in a glossy magazine or national newspaper, gets picked up by other media outlets and the whole…

Posted in Access issues, Features, Magazine, Nature

Discovering Aviemore

Posted on December 5, 2017 by Fiona Russell

In the 25 years that I have been visiting Aviemore, the size of the Scottish Highlands town and the volume of people that stroll the streets has vastly increased. Some might say that this has been to the detriment of the attractiveness of the settlement, located in the naturally beautiful Cairngorms National Park. Certainly, the modern housing estates that sprawl to the north of Aviemore do it few architectural favours and the pubs, cafés, restaurants and shops are often full to bursting with visitors. But I like the busy, yet relaxed and friendly, atmosphere of the outdoors town. It is…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Cairn of the Watch

Posted on December 4, 2017 by David Lintern

Keep ’em peeled! A few thoughts on access and conservation to finish off the year, from David Lintern. At the beginning of the year, I asked “what have the mountains ever done for us“. I wanted to round out the year by asking the same question in reverse. Of course, many hillfolk do an amazing amount – volunteering to provide access for those who find access difficult, path maintenance, conservation work parties, or donating money if time is tight, but I’ll wager more of us don’t do as much as we’d like to… and some of us don’t do much…

Posted in Access issues, Features, Magazine, Nature