The badger It’s dim. Though the days are getting longer the spring light is fading fast and I will soon be staring into darkness. I need to look to my right but I daren’t move my head, so I move only my eyes as I peer into the forest. I can feel two or three midges crawling across my forehead – hardly a plague but their insistent marching across my skin feels like an army. Normally I’d rub the midges away with an unconscious reflex swipe of the hand, but I can’t do that. All I can do is sit…

David Lintern shares a few basics for staying out in the mountains. After last month’s column about backpacking food, I thought I’d follow up with a few camping tips and tricks. I’ve met a fair few dedicated Munro baggers who are still a bit unsure about camping, especially for more than a night or two, but if that describes you, please – don’t miss out any longer! After a good walk, staying out in the mountains really is the icing on the cake. Even if the weather is a bit sketchy, camping out equals more time in the places you…

Last month I had the pleasure of hosting the National Adventure Awards in Glasgow, an annual gathering that celebrates the achievements of folk who have pushed the boundaries of their particular adventurous activities. It was a great event, an evening in recognition of some truly amazing accomplishments and an antidote to the prescribed, sanitised society that most of us live in. The nominees for this year’s Awards include some extraordinary individuals, people who quietly and effectively close the door on normality and set out to push their own limits in a wide variety of settings, from the wilds of the…

As we mark John Muir Day, April 21, Peter Pearson, Chair of the John Muir Trust, invites hillwalkers and mountaineers to get involved with the organisation that honours his name. “Who wouldn’t be a mountaineer! Up here all the world’s prizes seem nothing,” noted John Muir in My First Summer in the Sierra, a collection of journal entries describing his 1869 adventures in the magical mountain wilderness of Yosemite. Muir would later rise to fame in the USA as a writer, scientist and campaigner. He is today hailed as the founding father of the modern conservation movement, and the inspiration…

A couple of weeks ago I found myself sat in the Lochmaddy Hotel on North Uist, rain streaming down the windows, killing time before catching the ferry back to Skye. It was the final day of a four week jaunt around Scotland and, as inevitably happens when a journey comes to an end, I found myself reflecting on the highlights of the previous 28 days. I’d seen so much. Too much to recall in just one sitting but some notable experiences nonetheless stood out: exploring the cavernous space of Smoo Cave; standing below some of the tallest trees in the…

Camp food is one of the best parts of the outdoor day. David Lintern is thinking about his stomach (again). Backpacking and camping season is almost upon us, so I thought it was time to talk about something that’s high on my list of priorities when outside – food! When you’ve been carting a heavy bag across the hills all day, the rewards of a good meal are obvious. But it’s easy to over complicate this. There are millions of words devoted to calorie count vs weight, and a lot of it is there just to sell more prepackaged, pricey,…

SEVERAL folk have asked me recently if I’ve given up the hills for cycling? I’ve certainly been enjoying my bike a lot more in the past five years than in the previous fifty and it’s true to say that for me bikepacking has certainly taken over from backpacking. Over the past few years I’ve cycled Land’s End to John O’Groats; toured through France from the Channel to the Med and cycled Ireland end to end. Last autumn I spent a couple of weeks cycling in the Picos de Europa of north Spain, an area that had some of the longest…