Photography on the Trail
You don’t need a ton of gear to create meaningful images on a long-distance trail. Sometimes an agile approach can be best. This feature was first published in…
Tag: Scotland
The Alder Trail – Field Notes
Alder Trail, Scotland, backpacking
A moment in time: November 30th, 2009
‘I can’t do it, Roddie. I’m going back down. Sorry, mate.’
Book review: Moonwalker by Alan Rowan
Moonwalker: Adventures of a midnight mountaineer by Alan Rowan Walking the Munros. This is a time-honoured subject for hillwalking books, and it might be thought that nothing…
The Caplich Wind Farm proposal threatens the wild land of Scotland
Update: UKHillwalking asked me to adapt this article as an opinion piece for their website. You can read the extended version here. Although I lived in Scotland for…
Forty-eight hours at the Lairig Leacach bothy — a typecast
In a departure from my usual form for trip reports, I’m writing this one up as a typecast — that is, scans of pages typed on a manual…
Scotland’s last glacier … as it appears in the present day!
Photo (C) James Roddie 2014, all rights reserved Back in January, it emerged that the last glacier in the Scottish highlands may have lasted well into the 1700s.…
Winter climbing conditions – how much information is too much?
British winter climbing is in a strange place at the moment. We like to get away to the hills as an escape from “real life,” and yet the…
The Mounth Passes by Neil Ramsay and Nate Pedersen: book review
The Mounth Passes: A Heritage Guide to the Old Ways through the Grampian Mountains by Neil Ramsay and Nate Pedersen (Kindle) This slim ebook came to my attention…
Scotland’s last surviving glacier lasted into the 1700s, research shows
My new novel, The Atholl Expedition, asks a question: when did the last glacier in Scotland die? Was it thousands of years ago in the prehistoric past, as is commonly…
Defeated by Lochnagar but inspired by Balmoral
Wham! The gust of wind punched me in the chest, lifted me off my feet, and hurled me twenty feet back through the air to land, dazed, on a…
A week of mist and magic in Glen Shiel
This time last week I was sitting in the public bar of the Cluanie Inn, nursing a pint of Red Cuillin and reflecting on yet another spectacular day…