If you had to describe each Scottish season using just one colour, which would you choose? Well, firstly, let’s overlook the fact that every season can feel like October in some years and let’s assume there are the traditional four. Would you perhaps choose the verdant green of grass or trees for summer? The rusty brown of leaves or bracken for autumn? The harsh white of frost or snow for winter? But what about spring? If you had to sum up the season of regrowth in one colour, what would you choose? I’d like to nominate yellow. Not because of…

Linda Cracknell is an-award winning Highlands-based writer known for her creative approach to exploring wild places and man’s interaction with them. Her Walkhighlands’ essays cover the cultural aspects of the Scottish landscape on a quarterly basis. Always keen to make my travel interesting, I arrived as guest reader on a travel writing course at Moniack Mhor having made a four-day journey on foot. I chose a route which began with an east-to-west crossing over the Corrieyairack Pass from Laggan to Fort Augustus through the Monadhliath mountains, and then walked north along the Great Glen Way. There’s something about Moniack Mhor.…

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…

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…