This deadly poisonous mushroom, ubiquitous in Scotland’s spruce plantations, seems to be having a particularly good year — during a couple of hours of foraging this morning I saw hundreds of specimen in different stages of maturity.

continued ...

continued ...

I can’t say I have ever heard of Sally Rooney before yesterday (and at first thought she was the WAG of the Wagatha Christie fame) but I just bought a whole bunch of her books. In paper form naturally, so that when they are added to Cooper’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum, I can flog them at a tidy profit (lest there is any doubt that my motives are anything other than the highest virtue of market refined pure greed).

continued ...

So I finally got that wild camp I have been after since June. It nearly didn’t happen (again), due a debilitating, hard to shift, neck pain earlier in the week, but by Friday it eased off enough to ignore it and MTFU. My destination Beinn Dubhchraigh, though I had no particular objectives for the weekend.

continued ...

TL;DR: The most coherent treatment of the environmental and associated crises, and the fallout from them, that I have come across; a must read.

continued ...

Carbon monoxide emissions from camping stoves is not something that is much talked about (beyond the manufacturers’ leaflets saying ‘do not use inside a tent’, which is like a car manual saying ‘do not drive when raining’). But earlier today I got a poignant reminder, this is, in fact, a real issue.

continued ...

So, two days ago, the Uber Complex Chief Engineer, that mythical OpenReach beast I have started to doubt existed, turned up on my doorstep: ‘I gather, from the 5000 notes on this job, you are having a spot of bother?’

continued ...

The forest floor around here is very dry just now, in spite of the heavy rain we have had in the days before the brief heat wave. Nevertheless, I am beginning to see the occasional mushroom popping up again, like this deer shield growing from a crevice on a birch tree.

continued ...

A tidal turbine in the Pentland Firth has been in operation for over six years – tidal is a part of the utopian technological solution package for the environmental crisis, so let’s cut through this piece of commerical PR for a bit of a reality check:

continued ...

Scotland’s Rewilder in Chief is offering some new holiday lets at Aldourie (Loch Ness), starting at £470 per night. To quote from the (paywalled) Times piece:

continued ...

Parks Watch Scotland has an update post on the ministerial recall of the Flamingo Land planning application; if you haven’t read it, you should.

continued ...

Time for another update on our quest for FTTP – in 9 days it will be a five month anniversary of the start of this saga, and no light at the end of this tunnel. Here is what has happened since my last post in May.

continued ...

To say I dislike Gore-Tex lined boots is an understatement; I loath those things. It is a product forced upon us as a solution to a problem that didn’t exist, resulting in boots with a significantly reduced service life, yet sold at a premium price. And I strongly suspect the manufacturing costs are actually lower compared to a good quality leather boot. All in all, what you might call an outdoor equipment brand’s wet dream.

continued ...

continued ...

This is an excerpt from (the appendix of) a longer piece I have been working on for a while, but which I am unlikely to finish any time soon. But having touched on the rewilding subject briefly a couple of times in recent months, a more complete write up of my current perspective on the subject is, I think, desirable.

continued ...

It’s good to be printing again, it’s been a while, not least because I haven’t produced anything worth printing for some months. But that changed in May, and I managed to carve out some time in the last two weeks to work on three 16x12 prints from our Lewis trip — just finished this morning with some spotting that one of the prints required. 🙂

continued ...