Secrets Of Grouse In A Windswept World

An annual pilgrimage to the Highlands takes Richard Hardy into a mysterious landscape where rocketing grouse can be flushed by eager terriers

- M. Frith

Our long August journey north starts among the arable plains and burned harvest of Wessex. We then tear though the industrial hives of the Midlands, onwards to pause for diesel and dog food in the Lake District before the long drag through the borderlands of heather and wind turbines. Then we take a neat right and left up between Edinburgh and Glasgow until the sharp turn at Perth, where the road slows and trees rapidly outnumber the continental tourist coaches with their lurid livery.

From here on progress is stately rather than rapid, with the ground slowly becoming more open and increasingly rugged. Familiar names pass and the excitement builds — Dunkeld, Pitlochry, Dalwhinnie, Tomatin pass before finally Inverness has come and gone in the amber blinking of the low-fuel warning light and we are on the Black Isle with ‘only’ 100 miles or so to reach our Highland destination.

Enigmatic

I’m a southerner born and bred on the trout and partridges of Wessex, so the grouse is an unknowable element in the strange and mysterious Highlands — terrifically fast, exceptionally well camouflaged and highly enigmatic — as I am only in their world for a few short weeks every year.

I feel absolutely engaged in the year-round struggles of my wild pheasants, water voles and brown trout, but can only dip into the distant world of the grouse two or three times a year. Every visit requires the time and effort to catch up with the news from an old friend before the next inevitable separation, but the distance only serves to fuel my obsession and I long for the moment of our next encounter.

The first few days of our time were wet and extremely windy. August on the exposed west coast, only a handful of miles from the sea, can really surprise in both the ferocity of gusts and the rapid changeability of the weather.