Highland Sting

Head to the Highlands and get swept away by Torridon’s torrent of untamed trails; just watch out for the flesh-eating midges...

- Roo Fowler

Above my desk, on the second shelf up, next to a stack of maps, sits a large triangular stone of white, pink and orange hues. I picked up that stone 10 years ago on a camping holiday with my dad and my brother. We had driven past an imposing mountain high up in the Scottish Highlands, a couple of miles from the village of Torridon. Its distinctive bright slopes of shattered quartzite, and triangular shapes, drew my gaze.

The next time we drove past, I got my dad to drop me off at the bottom, and while he and my brother went off for the day, I began the steep scramble up to the summit. Halfway up, crossing a scree slope, I saw this triangular rock layered with colour and, for no particular reason, I picked it up.

I had the mountain to myself at the summit, the knife-edge ridges of Beinn Eighe stretched out before me, with its triple buttresses forming the shape of an E. I sat down on the middle ridge with a vast valley dropping away either side, and munched my lunch in silence, watching the shadows of clouds drift across the landscape. Twisting, well-defined ribbons sprawled across the rocky valley floors; were they trails or rivers? Either way, they looked bizarrely clean and smooth, perhaps smooth enough to ride bikes along? Not today though. With no mobile phone, I was relying on meeting my dad at a certain time back at the bottom of the mountain. I tore myself away from the view, but vowed someday to return.