Yggdrasil: The World Ash Tree

The ash tree, with its distinctive black, pyramid-like winter buds that sit defiantly opposing each other, was the first native tree I learned to recognise in winter. From the grey, ebony-tipped twigs I stood back to take in the whole glorious form of this tree at maturity: the grace and strength of the downward-sweeping branches, the solidity of trunk and main frame, and the artistic flourish with which the ends of each branch skip briefly skywards following their downward plunge.

Like all deciduous trees, the beauty of its structure is revealed annually at leaf-fall. We may love and appreciate our trees in summer, but in winter, we can truly see them. I never tire of looking at trees in winter.

Sadly, the monumental frozen-motion glory of the mature ash is a sight less and less available to us. Ash die-back disease is caused by a fungus (Hymenoscyphus fraxinea) which attacks and infests the bark, leading to wilting of leaves and die-back of those optimistic, sky-seeking terminal twigs. Jaggy, stunted branch-ends and lesioned bark are more often what we see today. The spores are wind-blown, and so it has spread inexorably through Europe. There seems to be little point in felling affected trees, since the fungus spends part of its life cycle proliferating in leaf litter. In pockets where old ash trees are isolated from larger populations, such as Glen Tilt in Highland Perthshire, the majesty of the winter ash can still be seen.

There will be resistant trees, and much is being done to find these, identify their genetic codes, and breed from them. We can only hope the ash tree’s absence from the landscape is temporary.

But the Ash Tree has an existence outside the biological. It is – and long has been – a symbol, a magical entity, a talisman. In Norse and Germanic mythologies it is Yggdrasil, the World Ash Tree. Its branches reach into and hold up the heavens; its roots delve deep into the dark caverns of the underworlds, where the serpent-dragon Nidhogg gnaws at its roots. Between the two lies everything we know, and much that we don’t. Three women, the Norns, sit below its mighty branches, tending the World Tree and spinning, spinning, spinning the fates of gods and humans.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are other expressions of Yggdrasil. Odin, father and chief of the Nordic pantheon, presents as a seriously flawed, doubtful and often misguided god. (To be fair, they all do.) Maybe that’s why he disguised himself as the Wanderer, with his wide-brimmed hat (echoed in the character of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings?) and ash staff cut from Yggdrasil, roaming the Earth in search of knowledge and enlightenment. Ultimately, the tale goes, Odin had to hang himself from the Tree, wounded by the ash spear, for nine days and nights, to find the wisdom to save humankind.

Should the Norns cease to care for Yggdrasil, or malevolent forces overtake it, like our blighted ash trees, it will die, and the rooster Gullinkambi will crow from its withering canopy, proclaiming Ragnarok – the Twilight of the Gods.

Will we save our earthly ash trees? Who are the gods whose twilight we would seek in return?

May 2021 bring a sea-change in our relationship with nature, may we all be safe, may Yggdrasil bear new shoots of hope, and may the ash tree survive.

By Riverside to Denmarkfield

There’s this story in Scottish folklore: A king (Scottish or Pictish) and his army were engaged in a long campaign to repel the Danish invaders who were terrorising the east coast. The Vikings knew that the only way to gain free access to the rich breadbasket lands and the treasures of the religious houses was to defeat the king’s army, which was camped, exhausted, by a river, thinking itself safe for at least a night’s sleep. The Viking spies located the army. and to gain advantage by stealth and secrecy, the warriors began to creep up on foot, swords drawn, and surround them. Thinking their boots made too much noise, the leader ordered his men to go barefoot. Their goal was in sight, until a skull-splitting screech and an unrepeatable Scandinavian oath filled the air. One of the Vikings had trodden on a well-armed Spear Thistle. The kings army were thus warned, and sprang to action to repel the invaders. Since when, the thistle has always been the emblem of Scotland.

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Last Sunday was the first of the seriously cold days of this winter. It will get colder, but we will have adjusted to it. Nevertheless,it was still warmer outside than in our currently challenged-in-the-heating-department house, so we decided to go for a walk to warm up.

As we sauntered along the footpath from Luncarty to the River Tay, almost a hollow lane, beads of frost and frozen droplets of moisture clung to any material they encountered. Ephemeral, discarded threads pf spider gossamer waved like chilly bunting. Touch one, and it evaporated. Frizzy, curled husks of ice-tipped willow herb seedheads towered as if frozen.

A haar descended. Generally the haar creeps upriver from Perth; today it seemed to come from all directions. Its gloom, exacerbated by the knowledge that somewhere behind it the sun is weakly shining, has the coldest feel imaginable. With wreaths of steam-like fog and mist flowing above the surface, the Tay resembled an Icelandic hot spring.

The river path proper starts at the site of the old Waulkmill Chain Ferry – once the only convenient way to cross from one side to the other. It closed as late as 1964, but I think this must have been a crossing point for many centuries before the chain ferry and pontoons were in operation. We headed in the direction of Perth City, watching gigantic pylons loom up from the cold dense air, bringing to mind the Martians from H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds.

And then we came to the derelict bulk of old buildings beside Denmarkfield Farm, and the unmarked stone that stands in the weedy, thistle-infested ground just above the river. Here, locals say, is the site of that momentous battle that propelled the Scots thistle to prominence, and the stone – called the King’s Stone – marks the spot. That’s why the place, and later the farm, have been called Denmarkfield ever since.

There are plans to build yet another road, the Cross Tay Link Road, from here to Scone on the east bank. The land around the King’s Stone (actually far older than the 10th century) is under a compulsory purchase order. As people speed over the new bridge that will cross the river, congratulating themselves on the ease and convenience, will anyone remember the Waulkmill ferryman, the king who slept by the river, or the Viking with a sore foot?

Last Leaves Falling

A Post for West Stormont Woodland Group

I pause on my way through the woods, quieting my breathing, keeping as still as I can. There is no sound, there is no wind. There should be no movement. Yet within the vascular systems of the broadleaved trees that bound the track, small enzyme changes are at work, invisible changes that lead to letting go, abscission, leaf-fall.

And down they come, silent, slow, like snowflakes in a still winter’s night. There is no flurry, no sound of wind through dry foliage, just the falling. Just the peace. Some trees are bare already. Birches are among the first to blaze golden and lose their leaves. Oaks keep hold of theirs till the last, but then they are usually the last to open in spring. Mature trees abscise before young ones. Young trees, and trees that have been pruned, will produce what’s known as juvenile growth, one feature of which being that the processes of leaf-fall are delayed. That’s why beech trees are so popular for hedges, the dry, crackly leaves slipping from gold to brown and staying in place till spring.

Young beeches, self-sown among the conifers at Taymount Wood’s dark heart, shine like tawny beacons.

They coat the ground, these last leaves, slick with last night’s rain and the condensing sweat of mist that loiters in motionless, tangled branches. Small sweeps of the already fallen lie around sedges and rushes, in hidden puddles and ditches. What else do they conceal?

A small brown toad lurks unmoving as the day, camouflaged among old birch leaves at the path edge. Then he moves, lopes distractedly into the grass, and is visible.

I like the emergence into visibility of the toad, and I enjoy the wood revealing its secrets as the leaves fall. The bizarre jutting side-branch of a fir tree, and the even more inexplicable branch that has fallen over it like a necktie, and somehow grown into an A shape. The filigree, waterfalling twigs of bare birch trees. The holes in trunks and large branches, the red squirrel’s aerial expressway from tree to tree. When leaves fall, I see that some trees are still richly clothed, decked in lichens and mosses so profusely you can’t see the wood, and decorated with the jewels of fruit and fungi. Food, forage and habitat here for small creatures that depend on the woods through the winter.

By the King’s Myre, the stillness of the day is magnified by the strange open vastness of this stretch of water. Reeds and trees and overhanging trees are reflected; birds are absent or silent. In the boats drawn up to the jetty, the leaves lie in rain that’s collected there, the sky bounces back, grey, metallic, motionless. There are no wafting clouds; it is all cloud, all greyness. And more leaves unhook themselves from life, drift down soberly against the small frictions of the early winter air.

On twigs and branches, wherever a leaf falls, a small tight bud, wrapped unnoticed in its winter coat, remains and waits.

A Slow Pilgrimage to Siccar Point

Photo by Dominika Roseclay on Pexels.com

I always liked stones. I collected pebbles on the beach from childhood, and in my teens followed my sister around Ayrshire beaches where the pebbles had magical names – jaspar, carnelian, agate, onyx. I went to the Leadhills in search of galena. I polished stones with carborundum, to little effect.

And, secretly, I developed the habit of having a special stone, of no particular value save that it caught my eye and fitted in my palm, in the pocket of every jacket.

I liked big stones, too, stones with human names and imprints – the menhirs of West Cornwall, the cairns and ring-marked rocks of Mid-Argyll, the carved stones of Pictland. I had no better idea than any expert why they were placed where they were, or what the painstaking sculptures were for. But I knew the people who made stone circles kept pebbles in their pockets, too.

In some kinds of stone, I invested more thought than in others. Granite: shards of feldspar, glittering quartz and the now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t shine of mica. The stone that made up Dartmoor tors, Scottish mountains and an unlikely acid-soiled, heather-clad, craggy-topped park near Leicester. Gritstone: hard-working rock of wind and watermills, a sharp, scraped, glowering edge in the Dark Peak. Quartzite: white, altered stones casting spells on Schiehallion, the fairy hill.

What were these rocks? Where did they begin? How did they get here? Where will they end? Why are they different? Why do they paint different pictures on a landscape? Why did that Leicester park make me feel I was in Scotland?

I found out most of the answers by studying Geology and Environment through the Open University, alongside biological sciences. One day on a field trip as I stood with others sketching outcrops, bedding planes and all the various features before me, I suddenly saw it. The landscape which had left crooked teeth of rock strata from one extreme to the other of my field of vision was once a monstrous anticline – one of scarcely imaginable proportions, like an outrageous rainbow. At some point it had collapsed on ancient fault lines. Before these rock strata had formed the bow, pushed up by plutonic forces, they had quietly lain flat and growing, at the bottom of a deep and ancient, long gone sea. I had found a new dimension to reading a landscape – one that underlay all the others.

As I moved towards completing my degree, two options loomed. Rocks? Or plants? Geologist or gardener? I chose plants, but continued to collect stones, embrace menhirs and mentally compute the past from the present view wherever I could.

And so, one wet, unwelcoming day, we walked the coast path in Berwickshire to Siccar Point, in the footsteps of James Hutton, Hugh Miller and all the great Scottish fathers of geology who had embraced with reluctance or excitement truths about the age of the Earth and the forces behind its formation, all revealed in the inconvenient truth of rocks not being where they were supposed to be.

Hutton’s Unconformity.

The wind was fierce and uncompromising. I trembled on the famous cliff, and understood why Hutton had gone by boat. Deposition, uplift, volcanic forces and metamorphic sleight-of-hand. Readable by some, wondered at by many, denied by others. I collected no pebble, no souvenir. Just the imprint of the wind, cold as stone, mutable as stone.

Exits, Entrances and Crossroads

A post for West Stormont Woodland Group

There is, really, only one easy way into and out of Five Mile Wood – at least in October. That’s from the south end on the Stanley to New Mill cottages road – currently a bit of a no man’s land thanks to the dualling of the A9. Here the track is clear, broad, made for forestry vehicles – and you can even park! At the north end, there is also the old straight track I’ve written about before, from South Barns and beyond that, with a diversion to Bankfoot. Follow the line of this track and it will take you to Dunkeld, once a mighty ecclesiastical seat. I learned last week that from Dunkeld to the wood it’s five miles – hence the name.

I wonder what happened to One, Two, Three and Four Mile Woods?

But once through the gate at the end of the straight track, the going is tricky. At this time of year, wellies are essential, thanks to the legacy of ditches, boggy ground and waterlogging that followed the felling of the trees here. When did it become the norm for forestry practice to leave such a mess? However, with care, agility and thanks to the enterprising actions of previous walkers using felled timber to ford the worst ditches, you can get to the main path that circles the wood.

Deer, birds and other animals have their own paths off into the undergrowth, but for humans, the area where trees were felled before the Commission ceased to work are becoming impenetrable, Gorse crowds thickly on either side of the track, requiring constant maintenance to keep it from meeting in the middle. Self-seeded birch, larch, Scots pine and willow are all growing well, but there are no paths between them in this baby wood. Then there are the trackside deep ditches, another legacy of forest drainage operations, not impossible to cross but very off-putting.

So walkers, joggers and cyclists stick to the circular path and leave the wood by the way they came. Someone on Trip Advisor found the wood disappointing, and the circular track through felled forest boring. But I wonder. We undervalue landscapes that aren’t “finished” – such as newly planted gardens and self-seeded woods at the start of succession. The prettiest part of Five Mile Wood may be the winding bike-track under mature trees which shoots off from the main path near the south entrance, but the burgeoning growth of pioneer vegetation in the centre – the “gap site” as some call it – is vibrant with hidden life, resounding with the flickering flight of small birds and bubbling with amphibians and aquatic life in the ponds and ditches created for drainage. Even the nuisance gorse is a rich nectar source for pollinators and home, each bush, to thousands of spiders and other invertebrates. It’s not what we are schooled to believe beautiful, but in terms of ecology and resilience, it is every bit as valid as ancient oak climax woodland. Not all landscapes can be measured in human terms – though the amount of carbon sequestered by rapidly-growing trees and shrubs will be enormous and far greater than that in a carefully-planned, gardenesque setting. And humans need carbon sinks as much as every other life form.

People like to have choices, though. Choices about where to enter the wood – entrance points close to all the settlements that lie within walking distance. New tracks to follow, new routes to explore, the chance to come out into the sunshine at a different point from where you went in. Paths that cross, diversions, sidetracks, viewpoints. I don’t think they should be the main focus of the wood, or dominate the richness of undisturbed wildlife in the centre. There must be places that are no-go areas for humans, where nature can get on with it, and prove, as ever, that she will make a better job of it than we can.

And then, let our tracks meet and link wood to wood, as we learn to walk more, and be more in nature and less apart from it. Then we will lose our expectations of park furniture and entertainment, and realise the woods aren’t, in the end, all about us.

The Island

Small island
of benign cattle,
quartz-veined rock-pools,
exotic trees
and runaway rhododendrons:
A chameleon island,
shape-shifting as the weather pirouettes.

Truly Hebridean
with its small, hand-moulded fields
and slow pale meadows, and
the flashes of white sand as the tide goes out.

But in a chiselled sky, it hardens
to shoulder the wind-borne rains of Shetland.
As sea-rocks darken and clouds come low,
sand blackens. I taste metallic air
of a sea-bound nation, far across
a cold, uncompromising, northern sea.

Then, in a flash, a rainbow erupts:
Sun-dazzled waves and sweet, warm,
blackberry-festooned tracks
through deep, lush valleys, recall Penwith,
and sun-drowned, southern afternoons.

But this island
holds its own keys;
makes its own future;
decides what to be
and to be what it chooses.

It defied all comparisons in Twenty-o-two.

What we Choose to Eat from the Woods

As soon as I entered Taymount Wood, I smelt mushrooms. Across in the pattering shade of the woods to my left, a family was ducking and diving and exclaiming across the ditches to each other. I could glimpse baskets, a small dog, a child or two.

Great! I thought, people foraging. Good luck! With chanterelles from a previous forage in my fridge, I just wanted to walk without expectations or intent.

Looking for late summer flowers, I was taken by the large numbers of Wild Angelica growing either side of the path. Each geometrically arranged flowerhead hosted a happy horde of hoverflies and other pollinators. I’m 99.75% certain it is Wild Angelica, an edible plant – but I’ve never foraged it. The quarter of a percent of my brain that says “But wait, it might be Hemlock or one of the other poisonous members of the family out to deceive” prohibits me, despite the smell, season and appearance.

If in doubt, don’t. I no longer take risks with my foraging.

Taymount Wood is the wood that sidetracks me, every time. Up to the right, a sunlit glade. Cross the sleeper bridge to the left – what’s in here? Horse-hair mushrooms (Marasmius androsaceous) swarming up from the pine needles. A collection of puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum) in mint condition cried out to be selectively foraged. Only firm, young ones are tasty, and leave more behind than you take.

One family of mushrooms of which you have to be wary is Amanita. There are some deadly poisonous members, some only moderately so. Others will send you psychotic. There’s a few edible ones. Taymount Wood today was full of Blushers (Amanita rubescens), one of the edible ones. I have never eaten it, and never will. The flesh bruises pink, which is the indicator of the species – but in other respects it is too like the deadly Panther Cap (A. pantherina). Just suppose a Panther Cap happened to blush one day….. In any case, Blushers are always riddled with worms and maggots before I get near them. Today, both species were growing close to each other and the difference was obvious. I still wouldn’t risk it.

In the photos below, a Blusher on the left, showing the ring; three stages of a Panther Cap; but what do you think is the one on the right? See what I mean?

The Tawny Grisette (A. fulva) I do eat. Unlike most of the family, there is no ring around the stipe, and the edges of the cap are evenly striated as if by a pastry-cook. They were here – but it’s a socially-distanced species that only ever appears singly – and I hate to take the only one.

The stench of death – but not quite death – drew me to the well-named Stinkhorns (Phallus impudica) in the ditch. Most people recoil at eating this mushroom, which exudes a sticky gel smelling like a corpse to attract flies to spread the spores. But I’ve eaten plenty – at a very young stage when they look like eggs protruding from the forest floor. There’s no horrid smell and the jelly surrounding the immature fruiting body is actually delicious. All right, to each her own!

Sidetracked again, I met half the foraging family. Marcin, his young son (and the dog) had just found the biggest Boletus mushroom of the day. We chatted, compared notes, and I admired Marcin’s basket of Ceps, Bay Boletes and others. Marcin learned his mushroom lore from his mother and grandmother in Poland, and their preferences are the Boletus family, chanterelles and Saffron Milk Caps. He loves these woods, and values them for their beauty and food supply. The giant Bolete he said he will not pick, but leave it to spread spores and be admired.

I showed Marcin my collection of puffballs. He looked aghast. “You eat them??” Apparently not a favourite in Poland!

This post was written for West Stormont Woodland Group https://www.weststormontwoodlandgroup.org.uk/

The Ploughman’s back home, and Waiting to Welcome You

A fretting wind and days of warm sunshine have dried the newly-ploughed clays of the Carse at Port Allen into indomitable cliffs of furrows, solid, backbreaking, massive, yet wonderfully fertile. From the broken bridge across the Pow of Errol, the old port is ghostly, a hint of quayside, a dream of ships, the blue sky and wild clouds mirrored in still water.

Endless reedbeds stretch to Dundee and over towards Fife, blurring with movement, a watery mirage that deceives the eye. You cannot see to the end of them. Nonchalent snails climb the haggard stalks of hogweed, clustering in the sun. Vision is fragmented, uneasy, focussed on a non-existent horizon.

Up Gas Brae to the village, beneath great oaks and into the wind, a flock of pigeons, as ever, tracking your progress, and the start of a strange orchard, lining the road on either side. It’s a good year for apples, and not bad for pears. Two trees, side by side, and another further up, branches encrusted with wine-red, deeply-ribbed fruit.

This is the Bloody Ploughman, whose tale of apple theft and a fatal, or maybe not quite fatal, shooting has been relayed here before. This was his village, these clays were his to plough. It was hard work; just walking behind the horses would have exhausted him. No wonder he stole the apples. Bite into the ripe flesh, and see the streaks of blood. It isn’t always the sweetest apple, but it is crisp and as refreshing as the ploughman would have desired.

This year, the Ploughman is home in Errol and well settled into the community orchard, surrounded by clay furrows. whispering reeds and the calls of waders and marsh harriers. Go now to visit, before the apples fall.

You can help yourself, and no-one will try to shoot you.

Through a Gap in a Wall

Through a gap in the wall, the horizontal lines of the Firth, flat islands looking half-submerged, and the frown of long lines of reedbeds across the water, are drawn like smears of dirt below a layered sky.

Pass through to the other side and the world has shifted, as though the rift faults that made this landscape just happened. The air is clamorous, the sky immense. In a town that arose among the orchards of an ancient abbey, the wild fruits of native Rowan are planted on the waterside of the wall.

By the slipway, the silver and gold of pungent Mugwort and Tansy give way to outsized rushes the size of small trees. Among them hide bobbing boats, lapped by the high tide. Listen to the clicking and fretting of small wind-waves on the stone wall of the jetty. From here, boats once plied a busy trade up and down river to Perth or Dundee, and across to ancient Port Allen in the Carse of Gowrie. Did they trade grain for Fife coal? Carse apples like the Port Allen Russet for Newburgh plums and Lindores pears? Did the monks from Lindores Abbey and their fellows at Grange in the Carse send each other scions and grafted trees?

Follow the path east, past salmon high and dry and leaping above mown grass, beside inaccessible muddy inlets bordered by reeds and willows and deep cuts where the old mill-stream threads unseen but laughing to the Tay. Vegetation is exuberant, chaotic, oversized and riotous. Great Hairy Willow Herb towers over the umbrella-sized discs of Butterbur leaves; nettle and insidious bindweed tangle through, the bindweed erupting in white trumpets of triumph.

Ponder the great bear with her raggedy staff on the hill above the town. It is not as old as you think, but is rooted in history, via a stone. How does the symbol of the powerful Warwick family (best known as mediaeval kingmakers in that other country, England) fit into this landscape? Was the first Earl of Warwick, Henry de Newburgh, really from this place? Or is it there because William the Lion of Scotland gave the title to his brother David – the founder of Lindores Abbey?

And the stone – the Bear Stone – at the centre of the story – where is it now? What did it mark or measure?

In the cool quiet of the Abbey ruins, trees and ivy hold up the remnants of walls. Old walls support vegetation and keep their secrets. Tread softly, slowly, let your thoughts be measured, as the sun moves the shadows across grass and stone. Be still. Wait. Centuries of contemplation hang heavy, and even the bees and insects of summer are subdued. Move on, quietly.

At the centre of the ruins, there is a Cretan labyrinth. Does it seem out of place? Follow its path – there is only one way – and do not cheat by stepping over the boundaries. Yes, you can see the centre, but you can also see there is nothing to gain when you get there. Just as when the monks of old walked their cloister, it is the journey taken, not the destination that matters.

When you leave, and come again into the town built on orchards, the world will shift again.

The Scent of Bracken

I was nine or ten when I first experienced both the smell of bracken and the nation that is Scotland. It was late July, the start of Glasgow Fair Fortnight, and therefore my parents must have taken me out of my London primary school for two weeks to pack me on a plane to Glasgow, for a fortnight’s camping holiday with my big sister Pat and her boyfriend. It was my first camping trip, too. It took me all the way up the west coast to Cape Wrath and literally changed my life.

My first evening in Scotland was memorable for sitting on a wall eating fish suppers. My first full day began with a curious morning at Pat’s work, where little was done beyond desk-tidying and paper aeroplane competitions. Then, the hooter went, tools were downed, and everybody went on holiday. Northwards first, in the Mini, me surrounded by camping gear in the back seat. We stopped by Loch Garry the first night, off a dead-end tiny road, and camped in a clearing in the bracken by the loch.

Loch Garry was my introduction to midgies. Naively, I thought they were all part of the adventure. I chattered away in excitement behind the mosquito coils, breathing in the strange, new scent from the bracken that for me would ever more be the scent of Scotland. Eventually, Pat interrupted me.

“Margaret, what time do you think it is?”

“Umm, maybe half past eight?” I replied hopefully, knowing my bedtime was at nine during holidays. I wanted to stay up a little longer.

Pat showed me her watch. It was twenty past eleven. Summer in Scotland, long days, even in July. I was persuaded into my all-too-exciting sleeping bag, and eventually fell asleep, though I never saw it get dark. And woke, next morning, to the smell of bracken once again.

We meandered north and west for nearly two weeks, camping wild up tracks that led from narrow, grass-centred, barely-surfaced roads to the ruins of long depopulated clachans and farmsteads. Sometimes we stayed under bridges, or on beach-paths up which seaweed was once hauled for fields now buried in bracken, their stone walls mere crumbling ridges in the grass. Once, we asked permission from an isolated farm, where the farmer’s wife took the cow for an evening walk each day. We filled our water bottles there, and tried to buy, but were always given, raw milk from the cow.

I trailed after my sister by burns and over cliffs, taking bad photos with my precious box camera, looking for eagles, dizzied by sea-stacks, drinking in a world I couldn’t have imagined from my London suburb. Ullapool, Mellon Udrigle, Achiltibuie, Lochinver, Stoer, Kinlochbervie, Oldshoremore – place names which became indelible in my brain. And the magical mountains of Assynt: Stac Pollaidh the “petrified hedgehog”, Suilven, Canisp, Quinag…. I had not known there was this.

As I inhaled the scents of bracken, I discovered its practical uses. Pitch your tent over it, and it made for a comfortable sleep if your air-bed leaked its air out every night as mine did. Bracken was an indicator plant for dry ground when crossing terrifying bogs (as were heather and, to an extent, rushes. Bog cotton and moss was to be avoided). And being a small child, the bracken generally towered over me, yet I could find paths deep into it’s forest, to child-sized clearings, for private pees or just to hide.

I already knew, from my uniquely progressive and brilliant Scottish primary school teacher, more about Scotland than the average English adult does today. I knew of the Clearances, the Wars of Independence, Burns’ poems and (reluctantly) Scottish Country Dancing. What I learned that fortnight was not facts. It was the country itself, sights, sounds and weather, the star-filled nights and the mists that clung in the whispering air; the colour of the rain; the beauty, the sorrow and the joy. I was never the same again. Although I muttered crossly to myself about long walks with wet feet, and the sheer copiousness of uphill tracks, I was captured. Thereafter, holidays with my parents sitting on crowded beaches in southern England, driving out to bustling “beauty spots” and picnics on the side of the road, were never the same. To their credit, mum and dad realised it, and did their best to incorporate more “adventure” into our trips.

But it wasn’t adventure I craved. I’ve never been very adventurous. It was the scent of bracken.

It was the scent of Scotland.

Thank you.