Magazine

Shooting the breeze: Framing your photos

Posted on September 23, 2014 by David Lintern

I thought it’d be worth trying to take a look at framing subjects in landscape photography. Last time I threw a load of numbers at you, but I’m deliberately abstaining from that here. Hopefully it goes without saying that this is a massive subject area and impossible to discuss objectively, but I’ll say it anyway. Subjectivity is kind of the point in my view, and something to be celebrated, especially since it can’t be avoided – we might see the same landscape, but we see it slightly differently. First, what’s ‘composition’? Apparently, wiki thinks ‘it’s the placement or arrangement of…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Photography

The Cairngorm Reindeer

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Ben Dolphin

Last week I was standing under a blue sky in a bleakly beautiful landscape. It was vivid with an unlikely marriage of green and orange, the brief surge of summer growth giving way to the rustiness of autumn. Bright white snow lay off to my right, the stubborn remnants of winter storms hinting at the true nature of the place. And just beyond that, not ten metres from me, a dozen or so reindeer grazed peacefully under a warm sun. I sat down on a rock and immersed myself in the timeless scene before me, alone with the reindeer in…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Nature

Head torches group test

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Peter Macfarlane

The nights are beginning to draw in and that means that descents after the sun has set aren’t too far away and the nights at camp are going to be long and dark. It’s about now your headtorch moves from the bottom of your pack to the front of your lid pocket and becomes a go-to bit of kit instead of emergency kit. Years ago we were stuck with huge halogen lamps and their matching weighty battery packs but LED technology has changed all that. Weight and bulk immediately dropped to handy pocket size and over the past few years…

Posted in Accessories, Gear reviews, Magazine

Scotland’s John Muir figure to retire

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Cameron McNeish

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…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Stop bugging me

Posted on August 19, 2014 by David Lintern

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…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Gear Test – Haglöfs L.I.M system

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Peter Macfarlane

Usually a gear test takes the best contenders from various brands and weighs them up against each other, but for my first Walkhighlands gear feature I’m going to test a familiar claim made by many of the manufacturers – that they’ve created a clothing system that works perfectly from base layer to shell layer meaning you don’t need to shop elsewhere. I like lighter weight kit, but never at the expense of performance. I want comfort, protection, usability and also durability if I can get it. Haglöfs’ new L.I.M. series seemed to tick all the boxes and they sent through…

Posted in Baselayers, Gear reviews, Jackets, Magazine

A guide to Scottish heathers

Posted on August 13, 2014 by Ben Dolphin

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…

Posted in Features, Magazine

Glen Etive – is it being spoiled by partygoers?

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Cameron McNeish

IT’S one of Scotland’s finest glens, the gateway to some of the best hills in the Central Highlands and a place that was close to the heart of a Celtic princess. Glen Etive has been one of my favourite Scottish glens, ever since I discovered the story of Deirdre of the Sorrows, a first century Pictish princess who was betrothed to the High King of Ulster before fleeing to Scotland and Etive-side with her lover, Naoise, one of the Three Sons of Uisneach. Celtic tales tell of her love of these hills, and of her heartbreak at having to leave…

Posted in Access issues, Features, Magazine, Nature

Shooting the breeze – Night photography

Posted on July 20, 2014 by David Lintern

I’m very lucky to have a wide and varied brief here at Walkhighlands, but I try to thread my ramblings together with reasonable photos. I hope to develop the photographic thread a little more over the coming months, and I thought I’d start with one of my great personal pleasures of camping out – taking photos at night. Taking photos at night is a real performance, in more ways than one. Setting up and operating the camera is more difficult in low light. Tripping over and breaking said machine or indeed the operator is not conducive to good results. Because…

Posted in Features, Magazine, Photography

In search of the perfect puffin

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Ben Dolphin

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…

Posted in Features, Magazine