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Yesterday, after packing all our stuff into a big red van, we made the drive back up north from Lincolnshire to our new home in Scotland. Dire warnings of snow spiced things up a bit, but in fact we barely saw a speck of snow on the drive, and skies
A first walk in my local hills after the move to Scotland
Yesterday, Hannah and I moved into our new house near Forfar. We've got a to-do list as long as my arm, but today I managed to escape up into the Sidlaws, our local hills, for a couple of hours...
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 On Landscape (Issue 132), February 2017. All images © Alex Roddie. By its very nature, landscape photography requires the photographer to be
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.’ It was one of those most perfect of winter mornings. The season had started early in Glen Coe, with snow sweeping the mountains before a cold snap froze everything up, bright and gleaming. In the bar the
Book review: Moonwalker by Alan Rowan
Moonwalker: Adventures of a midnight mountaineerby Alan Rowan Walking the Munros. This is a time-honoured subject for hillwalking books, and it might be thought that nothing new can be contributed to the topic. Search for books on the Munros and you’ll find everything from detailed guides to memoirs. However,
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 a number of years, I can’t claim an intimate acquaintance with the far North West of the country — that wild and
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 typewriter. I used an analogue camera to take all the photos on this trip so it feels appropriate. I hope you enjoy
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. Coire an Lochain, a deeply carved corrie in the northern Cairngorms, was believed to be the site of one of the last
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 world of climbing frequently mirrors the world around us even if we like to pretend that it doesn’t. Look around you.