Scotland

Scotland archive

Ardnamurchan. Barely populated except for the trees. Oak, birch, hazel, beech, larch. Rimmed by empty beaches of the palest sand looking west to islands sitting on a blue ocean. Rum, Eigg, Muck. Beyond them Skye, the Cuillin ridge unmistakeable against a far horizon. At Sanna Bay, with its sweeping golden...

“I don’t think I’ve ever been to Glasgow when it’s not been raining”, said my daughter on Sunday. She’s 32 and has visited the city many times since childhood. I’m sure she’s mistaken, has taken an average experience to be an absolute one, has learned the skill of hyperbole, or...

Scenic places and romantic names are the stuff of Skye. The Misty Isle of melancholy moods and sombre stories. In the heart of the island, the road to Elgol follows a wide, sedate valley between hills that seem to kneel in homage to the great ridge of the Cuillins up...

Among many other extraordinary things, my chum, Hazel, is a photographer. Possessed of a new camera and burgeoning enthusiasm, she told me she prefers to focus on the world in detail rather than the big landscapes; shoot telephoto rather than wide-angle, as it were. I thought about this the other day...

Weather watching absorbs you here on the Atlantic edge. Weather is big. Dramatic. Can be fickle too. Mornings feign to announce a succession of pure, clear, sunlit days to follow. Stolen away in the night. Come the new morning, a hesitant reveal, landscape fused with mists and memories. Watching for breaks...

Been dreaming a lot lately. Travel does it; different beds in different places. Remembering fragments of dreams. Mostly in bright, pillar-box red. Not sure why. Could just be pillar boxes. So many here at Camus Cross, in south Skye; a short stretch of single-track road studded with post boxes embedded...

The other thing that stays with me about Eigg has to do with the notion of ‘belonging’. What is it to be ‘a local’? This popped into my head as I sat sheltering from a squally shower midway through walking the length of Eigg. The rain came on heavily as I...

Two things stay with me about Eigg after my first visit there. Up in the north-west, Laig Bay gilds the foreground as you look out from the single-track road; it draws the eye. A wide, flat beach, white-gold dulled with tiny grains of grey as if granite had been finely ground...

Their names have been conjured up by someone with an impish sense of humour or else a dreary pedant unable to see the possibilities to sport with them. I’m writing this from Muck, the baby of the quad of islands. The others are, in size order, Rum, Eigg and Canna....

The train creeps past squat pebble-dash semis and unlovely high-rise blocks, style staples of inter- and post-war Glasgow.   A match for the grey skies. Trackside a fox sits licking his lips. There’s plenty of rubbish lying around. Perhaps he’s had his fill and is digesting at leisure. Litter abounds on the...

Once again, my trail has brought me to Glasgow to see Mum. The hiking boots and the rucksack went south and I came north. Just a Virgin train and the No 4 bus from Central Station and I'm quickly back in another world. I had said that I would come...

I call Glasgow every evening. It’s just the same when I’m at home, the evening call to Mum. But, somehow, when I’m in London I don’t think of it as the Blighty Nightly. Well, when you’re actually in Blighty you don’t think of it as Blighty, do you? And, in...

It's cold, 4 below in fact, clear, sunny and still. The kind of day when Glasgow winks at you in a knowing way - knowing it's looking its best. The sandstone of the West End, red and gold, just sparkles in the sunlight, its big, bonny buildings braced for admirers. I'm...

  ……..I mean the stuff about Glasgow never seeing the daylight. Since Thursday the sun has been shining on the snowy hills that cradle the city to the south and north. We (my big sister and me) were walking in Rouken Glen, the local park, with its glen walk, waterfalls, all...

Strange concept huh? But lo, I blog from the deep and wide valley of the River Clyde and can confirm that the barrancas hereabout do not lack for water. Nope, they are brimful and regularly replenished. Unscheduled return on account of the aged mother being a poorly soul and in need...