I’M beginning to feel a little like the Rev IM Jolly. The only time the Glesca clergyman and I are on the telly is at Christmas! This year our two hour-long programmes feature a campervan journey between Dornoch Point in Sutherland and North Ronaldsay, the most remote island in the Orkney archipelago. Last year we broke from our previous format of filming a long walk somewhere in Scotland. We’d walked the length of the Hebrides; we’d crossed Scotland from coast to coast a couple of time; created a new long distance walk in Sutherland; backpacked the length of Skye and…

As I sit here at home I can hear the surging roar of approaching gusts of wind. They’re whooshing through the tree branches and clunking at the wheelie bins. They’re whistling through tiny gaps in the double glazing, prompting a couple of the interior doors to creak ever so slightly. And between the gusts I can hear a constant low hum as though someone has left a diesel engine running outside. These are the sounds of a Scottish gale and, strange as it may seem I think I’ve actually missed them. A bit. Not because I carry any particular torch…

Mid November and the forecast for our walk was bad enough that I wondered if we would still go. After the previous day of high winds and sleet, it was now to be steady precipitation and no more than 2 or 3 degrees. But as we gathered around the minibus at the Corbenic Community in slight drizzle, no one raised the question. Curtains of cloud hung just below 1000 feet, and were pulled open occasionally to show the surrounding hills marked with the low boundary of new snow. This was my first outing with Corbenic’s hill-walking group, a weekly event…

Cameron McNeish admits to having been hugely inspired by Sir Chris Bonington’s early failures, rather than his successes. IT was a long time ago and I was lurching between jobs, unsure of my future and dreading the thought of suffering some corporate nine-to-five regime for the next 40 years. The only things I really wanted to do were to climb mountains and explore wild places and at that relatively youthful stage in my life I couldn’t think of a career that would enable me to do that. At 24 I was married with a young son and I didn’t have…

Following on from last month’s article, David Lintern seeks a further audience with she who must be obeyed – the Cailleach. The Cailleach, the Scottish spirit-feminine of wild nature, sometimes benevolent and sometimes malevolent, is an integral part of our placename culture. The mother of autumn stormy chaos, sister of frigid winter snows and daughter of regenerating spring bubbles up from our primeval consciousness everywhere we look – in coires, lochs, burns, moors and summits right across the country. On the Isle of Lewis, a whole moonlit panorama is named after her. Viewed from the standing stones of Callanish, the…

It was hard not to feel impossibly smug as I propped my bike up against the ruined house at Gortenbuie. It was absolutely calm, not a breath of wind, and as I peered through the empty windows the only sound I could hear was the rigid dried-up leaves falling from the adjacent sycamore tree. As expected, I’d seen no-one. “How many people ever access the hill from this direction?” I wondered. I stepped out of the ruin’s shadow and looked to the south. The undulating skyline of Mull’s interior burned rusty red in the rising sun, the high hills scattering…

All Hallows Eve is almost upon us, so it’s time for another seasonal excursion into Scottish mythology. David Lintern braves the cold, twice. Right at the very end of Glen Lyon, there’s a little shrine called the Tigh Nam Bodach, meaning the house of the father, or old man. And before we go any further, the name Lyon is reckoned to be a corruption of Lugdunum, after Lugh, the Celtic sun god, a character significant in the first chapter in this story, linked at the foot of the page. But we’ve heard enough from the men. Today it’s the turn…

I WAS saddened to hear of the death of the wildlife writer and naturalist Mike Tomkies, a man who penned some of the most riveting accounts of living in the natural world alongside golden eagles, wildcats and pine martens. He was a man who more or less shunned society so that he could live as close to his wild subjects as possible. Mike had been the Hollywood correspondent of The Times and had interviewed and befriended cinema personalities like Ava Gardner, John Wayne, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Peter O’Toole and Sean Connery but the showbiz life eventually soured and he…