Following in the footsteps of John Macnab

The Editor and The Judge set forth to Speyside in a bid to bag a Macnab-a salmon, a stag and a brace of grouse in one day-from the purple heather-clad hills that rise above the fabled river in the Scottish highlands

WHEN you first start to learn to Spey cast, it is like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. The cast seems an inexplicable conflict in the brain and it has caused me to mutter more swear words than anything else in my life. A balletic movement of loops and lines, it was invented in the 18th century and its eponymous river flows through the 22,000-acre Tulchan estate, near Grantown-on-Spey.

Flanked by whisky distilleries, Tulchan has hosted shooting and fishing parties for three British kings, the US president Theodore Roosevelt, banker J. P. Morgan and railway financier William Vanderbilt. It is an extraordinarily special place, where purple-clad heather moors rise steeply above the graceful river. If you climb over one hill, you look down towards Deeside and Balmoral. It was to be our base for an attempt at a Macnab.

When John Buchan wrote his novel John Macnab in 1925, his three heroes were hopelessly bored plutocrats in search of a cure when their doctor prescribes a large dose of excitement to improve their vim. The three men hatch an idea to poach two stags and a salmon respectively across three estates, under the pseudonym of John Macnab, having honourably alerted the landowners that they were going to attempt this illegal feat. Today, the challenge is to bag a salmon, a stag and a brace of grouse between dawn and dusk on a single day. It involves a tremendous amount of sporting skill, using rod, rifle and shotgun, fieldcraft and, most of all, a massive dollop of luck. Few places are better suited to the challenge than Tulchan. It has it all, together with an exceptional team of gillies, gamekeepers and stalkers under the aegis of director Laura Irwin.