Features

Shooting the Breeze – M for manual

Posted on April 9, 2015 by David Lintern

I’m pretty wary of straight ahead technical articles for Walkhighlands, but after chatting to friends on and off the hill, it’s apparent that lots of folk have incredibly powerful, modern cameras but don’t always know their way around the controls. The tech-talk is a bit dry on its own and covered elsewhere on the web, but decisions on which dial to reach for and when are definitely worth a look in an outdoors context. First though, set your camera to M for manual. Let’s look at the holy trinity: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO – the 3 cardinal points of…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Photography

Our pick: Scotland’s great sea stacks

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Paul Webster

Scotland’s tortuous coastline stretches for almost 10,000km on the mainland alone – or up to 16,500km if the islands are included. As well as picturesque fishing villages and stunning sandy beaches, there are sections of fantastic cliff scenery, including huge natural arches, deep geos (inlets) and – our subject here – mighty sea stacks. Am Buachaille, Sandwood Bay, Sutherland Rising 65m (213′), Am Buachaille – meaning the Herdsmen – rises as a splendid sentinal at the southern end of the almost legendary beach of Sandwood Bay (walk description) in the far northwest corner of Sutherland. The stack was first climbed…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Our picks

Wild land – where are the supporters?

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Cameron McNeish

ALLOW me to spout some numbers if you will. Between March 2013 and February 2014, according to Scottish Natural Heritage, 82% of adults in Scotland visited the outdoors for leisure or recreation, taking an estimated 396 million outdoor visits. That’s a massive figure but many of those people may have been taking their dog for a wee walk or enjoying a countryside picnic so let’s tighten up the numbers a bit. About 7% of those people visited hills and mountains, so that works out at about 27.7 million visits. It’s notoriously difficult to get up to date and accurate information…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Water Walker – a landlubber’s guide to packrafting

Posted on March 20, 2015 by David Lintern

A few weeks ago, Walkhighlands kindly reported on a little adventure a friend and I are doing in May. The plan is to walk and paddle across Scotland including the nine highest mountains – the 4,000 footers – using inflatable dinghy’s called ‘packrafts’. This might well sound a little insane, so it might be time to explain a bit more about these vessels, and the advantages they have for self-powered travel in the highlands. Modern packrafting was borne in Alaska, used by backcountry travellers and hunters, although previous incarnations of these cute little boats pop up in Australian outback travel…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Our pick: 16 of Scotland’s finest native forests

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Paul Webster

The Great Caledonian Forest once covered much of Scotland, below the high tops; Caledonia – the Roman name for Scotland – means wooded heights. The forest declined over thousands of years, due to both a slow change to a wetter, windier climate and to being felled by man and overgrazed by sheep and most especially deer. In the twentieth century huge areas of Scotland were planted commercially with sitka spruce, lodgepole pine and larch. Nonetheless we’re still lucky to still have some spectacular remnants of the ancient forest – including Scots pine, birch, rowan, aspen and – towards the west…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature, Our picks

The Quiraing – Britain’s biggest landslide

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Ben Dolphin

As you drive the single track road along the Trotternish peninsula’s east coast, you’re probably intermittently snatching glances out to sea or up at the hills. And who could blame you? It’s beautiful! You could therefore be forgiven for not noticing the signs indicating roadside maintenance as you drive through Flodigarry, but there’s no missing the sharp bump and sudden lurch downwards on one side of your car as you pass a certain spot on the road. This short stretch of road is riddled with bumps and cracks because it’s been hit by a landslide. Nothing unusual in that, you…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Wild Land and why it should have proper protection

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Cameron McNeish

WILD land. We all love it and want to defend it, but what exactly is it in a political and planning sense? How can it be defined? For years I celebrated ‘wilderness’, and I habitually used the term in a rather loose fashion before I came to realise that I was using the word as an adjective rather than a noun, an adjective that described a quality which produced a particular mood or emotion in me whenever I came face to face with a particular kind of landscape. Since time immemorial the word ‘wilderness’ has been symbolic of a landscape…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Music on the Bogland Rock: Creag Meagaidh

Posted on February 18, 2015 by David Lintern

David Lintern discovers the woody magic of Creag Meagaidh, a conservation success story. Mooching around in the gloaming, seeking a good pitch. I crossed the burn, up to my shins, surprisingly cold, fast and flowing hard. Widely spaced birch and thigh high grasses looked enticing from a distance, but the earth was sodden. Reluctantly, I turned around and crossed back. Reaching the bank, something made me freeze and look up from placing my poles carefully as I exited the riverbed. Climbing a steep hummock into the undergrowth and therefore seen from above, an animal the size and shape of a…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Red Kites in Scotland

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Ben Dolphin

It’s a cold, bright winter’s day and I’m sitting in a wooden hide. As I look through an open hatch the sun is warm on my face. Outside the hide, in an adjacent field, is a small pile of raw meat that our guide has dumped onto the ground from a bucket. I’m staring intently at it but every now and then I glance upwards, scanning the sky. It’s about as unlikely a prelude to a spectacular wildlife display as you could imagine, but something quite wonderful is about to happen and there’s a very real sense of anticipation and…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Our Pick: 13 walks with abandoned villages

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Paul Webster

The remoter corners of the Scottish Highlands and Islands are dotted with the remains of long deserted settlements. Some of them were victims of the Highland Clearances, when whole populations were forcibly evicted to make way for sheep; others actually became villages due to the Clearances, with people being forced to move there from more fertile ground. Still others were abandoned due to changing economics, the decline of hill-farming, the shift to towns and cities, or the sheer difficulty of making a living in remote and sometimes inhospitable locations. All are eerie places to visit, remembering the cruelty and hardships…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Our picks