Wilderness Walking

Only a few years ago a truly exceptionally warm and sunny spring Sunday like today would have seen us walking miles from the beaten track, often out of range of a mobile signal and even further from the nearest human help. Perhaps, in all our years of walking in the Highlands, we were lucky but we never needed rescuing and had few falls or injuries. We took a calculated risk each time we set out but these days, at our age, much as we would dearly love to embark on similar wonderful adventures, we would be foolish to do so, so our walks are along fairly safe tracks in areas which have reasonable mobile coverage and for distances with which our ageing anatomies can cope.

We mourn the loss of those wilderness walks but this doesn't mean we can't still get well away from civilisation, as long as we discount the wind farm tracks we now use, but these lead us into all sorts of wild areas, from extensive moorland to....

....varied woodland and....

....past secluded lochans, and we still see interesting wildlife even though they are no longer the spectacular birds and beasts with which we once rubbed shoulders.

Today's walk was the Farlary, a crofting area a few miles inland from Golspie, in the hope of a first sighting of an osprey - I think it's still a little early for them - and to find some lapwings to photograph. The latter obliged but they kept their distance, which is a shame as the males' plumage at this time of year is spectacular.

We had also hoped to see our first wheatear of the year but, as with the ospreys, it may be a couple of weeks too early for them. Never mind, instead we saw a number of these, which I take to be meadow pipits:  I hope they are as we found them in good numbers and this is yet another species which has, over the last few years, seen a dire decline.