We climbed Beinn Sgritheall on the hottest day imaginable (in Scotland). Coming back, weary and dry mouthed to pitch our tent on the fore-shore at Corran. My mind overwhelmed with the panorama of endless mountainscape. Grand, vast emptiness, but not empty at all. The scale of it defeated words…defeated thought. The dizzying loveliness of great height. The mesmerising blue of the sky reflected in Loch Hourn. Cooking on the shore as porpoises frolicked in the water and the sun sank over Sleat back on Skye. Waking at dawn. For me, only the dankest and most horrible weather can lessen the natural beauty of Scotland’s wild places, but on that luminous June dawn it was unparalleled. I’d never seen anything like it…
