On a hot summer’s day in 1995, in a lavish garden in Fife, my supervisor and I were standing in a big hole in the ground. …

Without question the best and most incredible story I’ve ever heard can, I think, be brought to a wider audience. The story’s main character, Gordon of Abergeldie, passed away late last year. It’s probably now safe to give the story an airing. I recount it as I heard it some…

Like a lot of people, I’d probably have said off-the-cuff if asked that 2020 was the worst year ever, what with lockdown and everything that it entailed. A closer reflection of the year, though, proves that initial impressions can sometimes be misleading. …

Several months ago, on Sunday 28th June 2020, the BBC’s Countryfile put out a tweet which trailed a package being broadcast on the show the same day. The tweet was — ostensibly — about the lack of black and minority ethnic (BAME) users of the countryside, and was up hardly…

July 1994 — Coire Gabhail (The Lost Valley), Glen Coe Understandably keen to give my new old Morris Ital (registration RRY 331W) a spin, and with good weather forecast for the next few days, I had managed to persuade the boys that a night’s camping in one of the most…

I don’t consider myself a proper photographer at all. I put most of it down to luck, in truth. …

‘Ben Lui in the evening sun looked SUPERB.’ That was that, then. Decision made. With an absolutely superb weather forecast for the Friday, Andrew’s description of Ben Lui on Thursday evening was too tempting to pass up. Even though it meant a re-planning of the Glen Etive triumvirate that neither…

When I was 23, and at a relatively low-ebb after leaving an awful job, my then-partner and I gathered all that we owned and moved to the small Hebridean island of Iona. Her grandfather was born there, and her mother was a well-known and well-liked face to locals of a…

This text was taken from the North British Daily Mail, published on 2 October 1848. The author is unknown. It describes a walk up into Glen Dee from the south. No rival to Glendee exists in Britain, and yet few tourists visit its sublime scenery. A road through the glen…