Exposed to the elements in the Scottish Highlands

It was a long, long drive from London to reach Glen Shiel in the northwest Highlands of Scotland. Hours of driving through seemingly endless blackness and wilderness became mesmerising. I could just make out the bleak grey outlines of the mountains beyond, against a moonlit sky.

I was in a kind of reverie - until I had to suddenly slam on the brakes on turning a corner, as my headlights revealed that the road was now crammed with deer.

Photo by Ben West

I hadn’t been driving so fast yet it was a very close call not to have written off a couple of them.

“Stags on the road, especially now, October, the rutting season, are a real menace,” said Mark, a local, when I recanted my experience the next day. “I’ve written off a car, and a friend of mine broke his neck avoiding crashing into one. And it doesn’t help you’ve got some mad people who insist on going 60 miles per hour on these roads.”

He said that ‘boy racers’ were also a problem: indeed there had been a fatal teenage car accident just the day before on the road we were on. In the summer two teenagers were racing their cars on a nearby road, and hit oncoming traffic on a blind bend, killing two.

Photo by Ben West

The light the next morning revealed a huge hill next to the lodge I was staying at that was crying out to be tackled. I say hill, but technically it was a mountain, being more than 1000 feet high. To this townie, it didn’t look much like a mountain, being covered in lush greenery and not appearing rugged enough.

It seemed cold and impossibly windy when I started out and so I was decked out in plenty of layers, but I very much overestimated as before long I’d cast aside my jumper and coat.

Photo by Ben West

The sound of mountain water gushing down was all around me, the gentle rain was refreshing. I looked down and the road and cars far below were like something out of a model railway landscape, the vast loch beyond disappearing into the thick mists. Little mountain plants of red, peach and yellow, mosses and grasses of pale green, dark green and gold peppered the ground, but there was not a bird to be seen or heard. Slabs of grey rock broke up the green in places, while the sky was fast becoming blacker. A fighter jet shot past, obliterating the peace.

Photo by Ben West

I walked down to the loch, with just a few buildings in sight, some gorse, bracken, and a few hardy trees against a backdrop of hills and mountains beyond. The fierce winds drove the water along. As I reached the loch’s edge a rainbow framed itself over the expanse of water.

There’s no denying it, the Highlands of Scotland are truly magical.