The magic of Christmas dissipated a long time ago for me, or at least the side of it that venerates the acquisition of throwaway tat that we’ve neither asked for nor need.
“Now THAT is a winter sound,” I said, as rooks called from starkly silhouetted trees on the other side of the field.
I’d never been THIS close to one before and, inches from my face, everything about it was fascinating – the yellow stripes along its side, the electric blue around its abdomen, the fur-like hair on its head.
Through the fog we could see a cairn drifting past to our right, perhaps 100m away and on slightly higher ground than where we were. Was that the summit?
A couple of weeks ago, on a weirdly hot day, I took a group of walkers to the top of Ben Vorlich in Perthshire.
“It smells so clean!” he said excitedly.
I wake up suddenly and slowly realise that I’ve been rubbing my eye. I blink a few times but nothing seems out of the ordinary. I look at the clock: 04:21.
As a busy ranger in the Cairngorms, when you’re working with the public in some of the most spectacular and beautiful landscapes in the country, the memorable moments come thick and fast.
I was at the Scottish Ramblers Gathering in Melrose last week which is an annual three-day celebration of social walking. That is, walking in a group.
Last week, during a long walk back from a particularly heathery Cairngorms lump, I stopped at a well-known pool on the Dee.
One of the nicest things about a Ramblers group walk is the possibility of coffee and cake at the end.
I always put my hat and gloves in the same handy place whenever I get home, on a shelf near the front door.
“Hiya!” Oh it’s such a small word. Such a simple word. So easy to utter.
At 7am the fog was rolling in over the farms, so I rushed up my local hill to watch the sunrise. I spent a sublime two hours up above the fog watching the beautiful lightshow unfold.
“So……what’s your favourite walk in all of Scotland?”
In 2014 I was in the Cairngorms and walking a track near Loch Etchachan, the highest loch of its size and one of the more remote ones in Scotland, when something white caught my eye in the otherwise brown landscape.
I am going to say a word. A very naughty word. It has four letters, begins with an S and is likely to cause a large number of people some degree of distress... so be sure to cover your ears if you don’t want to hear it. Are you ready? Okay, here goes:
Last month I found myself reading two children’s books, pondering which of the two I’d rather read to a group of toddlers who would soon be learning about ‘critters in litter’ (wee beasties in the undergrowth). One was about a badger and one was about a worm.