Cameron McNeish discovers that a head knock had much more serious consequences than he first thought. IT all seemed fairly innocuous. The gutters on our house needed clearing and I figured it would be an easy job to stand on a ladder with a hosepipe and get the job done. I cleared the gutters and was about to descend the ladder when whatever happened next happened. I had fallen off the ladder (the ladder had actually slipped and I came down with it) and on the way down I banged my head off the harled wall, which tore the skin…

In my opinion, there are few glens in Scotland as dramatic as Torridon and a drive along the road that winds through the base of the glacier-eroded valley is always breath-taking. No matter the season or the weather – and in this wilderness area of Scotland it can be fast-changing and fickle – the steep-sided, rugged mountainscape of ancient Lewisian gneiss, white quartzite and red Torridonian sandstone offers magnificent views. It is a place, too, where the pace is more old-fashioned and relaxed. Both locals and visitors willingly pull into passing places on the smoothly tarmacked singletrack A896, which winds…

It’s wonderful when a place surprises you, when something you think might just make an interesting diversion actually turns out to be something extraordinary, something revelatory. Perhaps even something profound. The Bone Caves of Inchnadamph were somewhere I’d driven past innumerable times on my way to somewhere else, most likely to Kinlochbervie, the Assynt coast or some great big lump of Coigach rock. I’d certainly been aware of them both as a notable geological feature and as an important site in Scotland’s ecological history, but for some reason I’d never actually stopped to visit them until March this year. The…

THE trail climbed steeply out of the creek’s gully to follow a crest that paralleled the edge of the cliffs. Soon, it gently dropped down to the clear waters of Yosemite Creek where white granite slabs sloped down to the lip of Upper Yosemite Falls. The stream flowed gently over the smooth slabs before suddenly gathering itself to plunge over the lip of this sheer cliff to become the 1,430 foot Yosemite Falls, one of the longest waterfalls in the world. Earlier in the day I had stood at the bottom of the falls, full of admiration for John Muir…

Britain’s voluntary land-based mountain rescue teams are supported by professional helicopter search and rescue operations. David Lintern visits the new Coastguard Search and Rescue base at Prestwick. Prestwick SAR (search and rescue) became operational in Jan 2016, and in that year it was the busiest base in the UK. It’s one of ten bases across the UK, and the 6th to come online in a phased transfer from the old mix of military and civilian services. Bristow Helicopters Limited now operates the service on behalf of Her Majesty’s Coastguard. Overall, it’s a £1.9 billion operation that rescues or assists about…