On one of my days off last week I went to the beach. That’s not unusual in itself, seeing as I live in Fife. We have 117 miles of coastline right here with glorious sandy beaches and wide open vistas. But sometimes, when I know the sun will be shining and the skies will be blue, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than on the west coast with its irresistible mix of beaches, hills, rocks and islands. My destination for the day was therefore the stretch of coastline between Arisaig and Morar. A long drive from Fife I admit, but as…

A number of years ago I made a television programme with the late Chris Brasher. The idea was that we’d take a multi-day walk in the Cairngorms and discuss how wild landscapes had affected his life, an extraordinary life as an athlete, Olympic gold medallist and an enthusiastic mountaineer and hillwalker. Shortly after he arrived in Aviemore Chris asked if we minded if he disappeared for a day during the week. He had a horse running at Punchestown races near Dublin and he wanted to go and see it. As you can imagine this posed considerable problems for our filming…

AT the end of September one of Scotland’s best known environmental campaigners will retire from his post as director of Ramblers Scotland. To be honest I’m not terribly sure if that is his title anymore. A few years ago, in a fit of Londoncentricism and not a little pique, the Ramblers CEO at the time, one Tom Franklin, decimated the Ramblers Scottish and Welsh offices in a so-called cost-cutting operation. The Scottish budget was drastically reduced and Ramblers Scotland office personnel was cut from seven to one and a half and the director’s salary halved. I have absolutely no doubt…

This time, we’re focusing on 3 things that can make Scottish summer camping a real trial. Forewarned is forearmed, and believe me, these 3 will love your forearm… and the backs of your knees. You can’t get rid of them completely, but with the right preparation, you can keep their mischief to a minimum. Midges Easily the most irritating summer highland hazard other than caravans on the A82, midges can and will turn a rose tinted wild camp fantasy into a crawling, biting Cronenberg-esque nightmare. Midge season is early June to early September, with peak season being late July through…

If you’ve been out in the hills lately you’ll hopefully have noticed shades of purple and pink standing out against the otherwise green landscape. Certainly that’s been my experience on two recent walks, one up Beinn a’ Bhuird via The Sneck in the Cairngorms and one along Loch Turret in Perthshire. The different shades I saw on those walks are the ones that accompany summer’s inevitable slide towards autumn, as the heathers burst into flower. I say heathers with an ‘s’, using the plural, because there are many species and it’s a name used quite widely (and loosely) to describe…

The Jewel of the Forth An island measuring 1500 by 500 metres mightn’t be the first place that springs to mind when you’re looking for an afternoon’s cliff-top walking or one of the greatest natural spectacles in the British Isles, but stick with me. With its imposingly sheer cliffs, solitary panoramic location and enormous expansive views of the Forth estuary, the Isle of May is well worth visiting for its modest walking potential alone. But if that wasn’t enough, the island is also blessed with an outrageous abundance of seabirds. Seen from the industrial Fife coast or from Edinburgh, where…