My first ever North Western Highland hike took me to the Fairy Lochs above Shieldaig. What began as a wet walk to a wartime crash site became a reflection on solitude, land access and what it means to seize an unexpected second, or in my case, third chance at recreating myself. Enjoy 🙂

Setting off from Shieldaig Lodge, head to toe in my farm-worthy Gore-Tex, my journey would take me around Lochan Sgeireach (Rocky Lochan), through a slippery and boggy traverse into the backcountry and onwards to the Fairy Lochs. As the track gave way to the open hillside, the sense of isolation became impossible to ignore.

There is a shift in all of us when we’re out in the hills, a new humbling, a new experience, maybe you saw new wildlife, met a cool face or two, or maybe like me, you judged over some shoddy piece of livestock fencing that is well past its use-by date. It’s just, it isn’t that hard to feel alone, very alone. Many villages barely reach triple digits in population during off-season, the rumble of motorway traffic simply does not exist and the added ambience of the gentle pitter-patter of rain droplets against your hood takes you to a place of calmness serenity. And I love it. This feeling, this realisation, is something that I have found you cannot find where other people so frequently are.

Fortunately for many of us hill-walkers, the “right to roam” across Scotland’s great vastness makes it easier for us to find these places of mindfulness. It is something I am immensely grateful for. Truly, I believe that it neutralises the class-hierarchy between what is yours by-law and what is ours by-right and that we can share in it all.

So please, stick to the path and leave no trace, dogs on leads and music off. This isn’t a community park-garden in the middle of a town, this is a place for solitude, silence, exploration and collective embracement with nature. You don’t know what ground nesting bird, colony of haggis, rare mammal species you may disturb or deny its right to reproduce. As within this freedom, the “right to roam” does have an ecological impact, so don’t abuse it, or can we afford to lose it?

Yet for all the wildlife, solitude and scenery these hills offer, sometimes it is the human stories hidden among them that leave the deepest mark. Such was the case for the crew of the USAAF B-24 that came down in 1945.

To see the memorial amidst all this natural Scottish beauty; pilots no older than twenty-two, alongside thirteen other young souls, remembered by faded American flags resting upon the floor of an immensely glorious Highland landscape, is a sobering experience. It begs me to ask the question, what are you going to do with your life once you get off this hill? Surely you cannot return the same? Nobody is ever the same after hiking to such a place, both metaphorically and physically.

So onwards and literally upwards. Scotland is bountiful and plenty, there are many heights to climb, birds to spot and hopefully an odd person or two to meet. My new life in Scotland might just shape up to be my greatest version of myself yet.

-That Wandering Rhys