This bun has been in the oven for three years and two months and now she’s finally here.
My book is written as though I’m walking along with you, dropping in history, folklore and other nuggets along the way. There are castles, stone circles, museums, distilleries and also plenty of opportunities to eat cake.
Slow travel is about taking the time to find lesser known spots and really connect with the places you visit. I’m proud of how much I’m crammed into these 328 pages, and I hope that whether your interest is wildlife, whisky or waterfalls, you’ll discover something special. Incidentally, it’s the perfect size to slot in your rucksack and take out and about.
Today I’m thinking back to a little girl who loved writing so much that she thought maybe she could be an author when she grew up. Well, she did it.
Yes those are dolphins jumping in the background – I’m just that good!
It’s that time of year again! One of my favourite things about spring is watching ospreys plummet into the water and emerge carrying huge flatfish, with the suave flourish of a magician extracting a rabbit.
I’ll be honest – I rarely get excited about larger raptors as they’re usually just a hazy speck in the sky. But ospreys bring all the drama, sometimes appearing out of nowhere and sending nearby herring gulls into a flap.
An osprey will hover high over the water, using its incredible eyesight to track a fish. Then it sidles down through the air, finally slamming into the shallows talons first.
It’s often a game of luck if you’re standing in the right place when they dive (and if you’re nimble enough to catch the actual dive, which I regrettably wasn’t), but you’ll hear the splash even from several hundred yards away.
Elsewhere on the water, I was watching a heron minding its own business when it was mobbed by a couple of common gulls. Despite the size difference, the heron was shooed off its patch and raced past me with a reptilian squawk and a sweep of its vast grey wings.
The Scots Magazine has a photo feature each issue written by a famous Scot about their favourite places in the country. They can be locations with personal memories attached to them or just spots they enjoy visiting. It got me thinking about which places I would choose, so this week’s blog is my ‘My Scotland’.
Burghead
This narrow village on the Moray Coast, surrounded on almost all sides by ocean, brought about a huge shift in my life. Those who have followed me for a while will know that I grew up in south east England, and once I began exploring Scotland I realised I didn’t belong in my home country anymore.
It was Burghead that introduced me to north east Scotland and this in turn led to my first book, so it will always be a meaningful place for me. I’ve also seen a humpback whale, orcas, basking sharks and the northern lights from its rocky shore, so that scores it plenty of points!
Edinburgh
Edinburgh was the first city I visited in Scotland, and every time I go there I’m on holiday so it reminds me of Fringe shows and the Christmas market no matter what time of year it is.
Its centre is old and graceful, with everything you expect to see in a city but with cobbles, narrow closes and plenty of steep staircases. It’s also the home of Hendersons, an amazing vegetarian restaurant where I’ve had my favourite ever meals.
Image: Aleks Michajlowicz
Assynt
Since moving to Scotland I’ve made a pilgrimage to the west coast every year. Usually this is in autumn to coincide with rutting red deer and leaping salmon, but I’ve also been in summer and seen great northern divers, white tailed eagles and even pine martens in daylight, when it’s not truly dark until nearly midnight.
It’s also where I broke my lifelong curse and got my first otter photos. The wilderness of Assynt has given me countless wildlife memories and as soon as I leave I’m thinking about when to go back.
Aberdeen
I’m not much of an urban dweller and much prefer the stillness and seclusion of rural habitats, but I connected to Aberdeen straight away. Scotland’s third largest city is hugely varied and this is perhaps most evident in its architecture, where a single street has large stone block buildings, ornate granite colleges and transparent office blocks.
Despite its size Aberdeen is easily walkable, with museums, gardens, restaurants and artworks in just a couple of miles. It has loads of character.
Uath Lochans
I love the Cairngorms National Park in general, but this spot in particular had me obsessed from my first visit. I rarely use the word ‘magic’ because there isn’t much that justifies it, but the Uath Lochans do.
Submerged in pine forest not far from Aviemore, these four small lochs sparkle like they emit their own light. On a still day in summer, their surfaces create perfect reflections of the heathery hills beyond, disturbed only by the feet of dragonflies.
My book will be published one month today, and I can’t believe I’m writing this but there are two double page spreads about it in the latest issue of The Scots Magazine!
At the end of last year I was interviewed by journalist and outdoor enthusiast Nick Drainey. Although our main topic was my book, we had a great chat about Scottish walking, nature and travel in general.
I loved having the opportunity to talk about Slow travel and my experience writing the guide, but it was also really special to reflect on where my love of Scotland began. I think Nick’s done a wonderful job and I’m proud to be a small part of such a great Scottish publication.
‘Slow Travel: North East Scotland’ is out 15th May
Snow scuppered my last attempt to photograph my local hares, and I didn’t have an opportunity to try again until this week. The conditions couldn’t have been more different, and I arrived in semi-darkness just as a smudge of yellow was blooming to the east.
In my initial binocular scan, I spotted two hares in the far corner of a stubble field, so I made my long way around, keeping to the edge beside the dry stone wall. At a respectable distance, I settled on the ground and wriggled into the comfiest position I could manage in hard yet soggy mud. Soon after, golden hour struck with heaven-like intensity, turning the grass to flame. The hares were perky, lolloping around with the occasional burst of a chase.
One hare disappeared and the other started foraging far off in the centre of the field. With my camera propped on my knees, I was watching it through the viewfinder when a blurry blob covered my view. The first hare had reappeared some forty feet from my lens, no doubt having watched me with a hare’s version of amusement ever since I’d been willing its companion closer.
Twisting my back in all sorts of wrong ways, I followed the hare as it ambled in a semi-circle around me, sitting for a few moments to have a nosey before disappearing into the long grass.
Light that molten was never going to last, but I was already covered in mud so I hung around after golden hour to see what else might happen. And before long another hare hopped over. The key with any wildlife is to let it come to you, and hares are no exception – I’ve discovered they can be curious to the point of full-out snooping. If you sit still, they often sidle over for a closer look.
My special sunrise with the hares was well-timed for Easter this weekend. Hares are said to be the companion animal of Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn and spring. The link between eggs and the Easter Bunny doesn’t seem to make much sense at first, but one explanation comes from a bit of lapwing ecology.
Unlike rabbits, hares don’t use burrows but instead lay in scratched-out forms on flat ground. Lapwings are ground-nesting birds and often lay their eggs near a hare’s form or even inside it. Seeing lapwing chicks and baby leverets emerging at the same time could have led people to believe that hares laid eggs.
To be fair, hares are stealthy and mysterious animals, and that’s part of their irresistible charm.
I couldn’t be less of a night owl. Unless something exceptional is happening, I’m tucked up by 11pm and asleep minutes later. This means that I routinely miss the northern lights, which appear in the sky above my village several times each winter and early spring, and I wake up the following morning kicking myself at the missed opportunity.
So naturally, when the alert came last week I was already in pyjamas. Luckily I hadn’t yet nodded off, so I scrabbled for thermals, camera and tripod and legged it outside. I could already see pillars of aurora even through the streetlights, so I felt the familiar dread that I’d missed the peak of activity. Still, I was grateful to be seeing this crazy phenomenon that I so often sleep through.
At 23.22 something caught my eye right over my head. I thought it was either a shooting star or one of my extensive collection of eye floaters, but when it didn’t stop I realised it was the aurora. Bizarrely for Scotland, the beams had stretched all the way up the sky and were flickering in so many different directions that I couldn’t look at them all at once. A massive diagonal column slanted to the side of me and a narrow band pulsed above me every few seconds.
In my bleary-eyed confusion, I’d grabbed a lens that was a bit too cropped for landscapes, and while I got some interesting close-up shots of the pillars, I was keen to photograph the whole sky. So I gallantly ran home (up a very steep hill I might add) to switch lenses. I arrived back just as the sky turned raspberry. I couldn’t see that colour of course, but my camera picked up a vivid blush across the entire horizon, layered above the more usual green aurora.
Some folk say they can see the colours but I’ve never been able to, not even when I watched the northern lights in Arctic Norway. I don’t mind seeing silver instead though – what I love most is the movement. Wisps of light being blown by an undetectable wind is the most surreal thing I’ve ever witnessed, and I jumped up and down in the pitch black with my hands clapped over my mouth until well after 1am.
I said I didn’t stay up late unless something exceptional was happening, and that display qualified. I was a wide-eyed night owl at last.
As habitats go, a river is a particular favourite of mine. Not only does it make one of nature’s most soothing sounds, but it’s usually a hub of wildlife activity.
When I arrived, the first bird to catch my eye was a blue tit, which was loudly serenading everyone around it with its ‘tea-tea-lily-lily-lily’ call. Beneath it, flickering from rock to rock, was a grey wagtail. Similar to other river-dwelling birds, grey wagtails have a high-pitched call that cuts through even the chattiest of rivers.
On the calm pond beside the stream, a pair of mallards swept around in slow circles. Surely one of our most under-appreciated beauties, the male mallard shimmers in direct sunlight.
I’d come to the river especially for dippers. This patch has a Rocky Road structure of stones, logs and twigs jutting out of the water, providing countless opportunities for perching and dipping.
On some occasions, I’ve had to settle on the bank and wait a while for the flash of brown and thrum of stumpy wings as a dipper zoomed by, but today I timed my visit perfectly. Just as I was peering along the water channel for a white bib, a dipper came zipping past me and landed several feet away.
I crept closer and watched as it ducked down behind its perch until only the top of its head was visible. It emerged holding an enormous clump of moss in its bill. With another dip, it sped back downstream, returning minutes later without its foraged cache.
For the next hour I watched a pair of dippers gather moss almost continuously. I’m always heartened and impressed by the diligence of some bird parents. Chicks were obviously on the way, and they would have a luxuriously cosy nest ready for them when they arrived.
My plan had been to photograph boxing hares. According to the (notoriously unreliable) forecast, it was going to be a cloudless sunrise, so you can imagine how nettled I was to find myself in a mild blizzard at 5:30am, barely able to see 100 yards past my nose.
And of course, that’s when four hares appear out of nowhere and start boxing, just as I’m pawing great hunks of snow out of my eyes. By the time the snowfall subsided the boxing match was over, but a solitary hare was still loitering in the open, just as crazy as I was.
Determined to have more luck elsewhere, I ventured into the forest and found long-tailed tits and goldcrests. These tiny scamps really tested my reflexes, barely pausing for a second before flitting off to another branch.
A few hours later my feet were sufficiently numb so I headed back home. I passed the beach on the way, which was just as white as everything else.
Nature is unpredictable at the best of times, let alone when snow is involved. I ended up really pleased with what I managed to photograph though, despite the shaky start to the day. Still, I’ll be back for those mad March hares soon…
My Slow Travel Guide to North East Scotland will be published exactly two months today! To celebrate what I’m considering to be the start of The Final Countdown (cue Europe), here’s an exclusive sample from the book about the town of Banchory, 18 miles west of Aberdeen.
Banchory is the last major town before you move across the boundary into Aberdeen City, hanging in a hammock of the River Dee as it flows east. Close to neighbouring villages and with the granite torr-topped hill of Clachnaben nearby, Banchory is a handy base for exploring this part of Aberdeenshire. It’s also your best bet for shopping, with a range of gift shops lining High and Dee Streets.
High Street
By happy accident, I found my favourite part of Banchory while tracking down the library, located within the pedestrianised Scott Skinner Square. Named after one of the greats of Scottish fiddle music, James Scott Skinner, the square contains a selection of small businesses arranged around a mini amphitheatre of steps.
Scott Skinner Square
James Scott Skinner was born in Banchory in 1843. By the time he was eight years old, he was playing the cello at dances across Deeside. Cello playing wasn’t the only string to Skinner’s bow though (pun unashamedly intended). He also trained as a dance teacher and was even invited by Queen Victoria to teach the children of Balmoral Estate in 1868.
In the square is a tiny garden with woven sculptures of a fiddle and treble clef musical note, created by Ayrshire-based willow and steel artist David Powell. One of Skinner’s most famous pieces, ‘Bonnie Banchory’, inspired the creation of three abstract columns around the square’s amphitheatre. On the top of each is a stack of different-sized rods, representing the sound waves of this song.
Woven sculpture by David Powell
If you walk south on Dee Street you’ll soon cross the river. Half a mile further along is a T-junction, where the left branch passes over the Water of Feugh. Running parallel to the stone road bridge is a newer footbridge where you can peer down at the Falls of Feugh below. The water surges in two channels around rocky contours before crashing into a slower pool and continuing under the bridges. In autumn, this is a good spot to look for leaping salmon.
Falls of Feugh
Five miles south of Banchory is Nine Stanes Stone Circle, conveniently close to an unnamed road passing through a Sitka spruce plantation. There are six standing stones, a chunky horizontal recumbent and two wonky flankers, making up the nine stones in its name.
When I visited, I’d just experienced an assorted delight of road closures, cafés shut when they shouldn’t have been and insufferable August heat (I have about the same heat tolerance as a Mars bar). I arrived at Nine Stanes a sweaty, irritable mess and, although sitting in the middle of the circle with grasshoppers boinging around my feet didn’t make me any less sweaty, it was a serene way to end the day. Stone circles are good at that.
This one was arranged some 4,000 years ago, used as a burial place and to mark the movement of the moon throughout the year. Its stones now have mossy beards and grassy feet, but after all that time they’re still standing.
Banchory street art by Shona Macdonald
As you can see from this sample, Slow guides are just that: leisurely, and written as if the author is walking around with a person wearing a blindfold. I’ve loved writing in such immersive detail, as it’s given me the opportunity to really dive into the nuances of each location I’ve featured in the book. There’s a lot of nature and wildlife, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, but this particular entry gives you an idea of the variety of other things I explore too.
I’m so excited to share the biggest project of my career so far with you all. I’m currently working through the proofs and seeing the pages take shape, so it won’t be long until I can finally hold my first book in my hands.
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