Back in the Ochils today. The expected icy roads didn’t materialise, but incredibly poor visibility in the Hillfoots due to thick fog, at places no more than twenty yards — had I not known the road well, I might have at one point driven right through one of the bigger roundabouts with a statue in the centre of it!

But the fog was relatively thin, and I climbed out of it about where the woodland path enters Silver Glen, with just the top of the monument peaking above the clouds. For the next hour or so the light was absolutely sublime, the rising sun bringing up saturated orange and green tones in the white capped Alva Glen, the sides too steep to hold the snow.

I must admit, there is the occasional time where only a colour photograph will do. Not that I brought a camera with me, or could be bothered to get the phone out to take pictures; as the bard once said (and I am fond of repeating) I need nay reel-to-reel to ken I was there. But I did get an idea for a photograph, though it will have to wait till the snow and ice is gone from the track, as I might need the bike to get the big camera up there.

But the clag rose up from the Forth valley before I climbed up from the glen onto the plateau. It would have been a perfect day for navigation practice, that’s for sure (not that I brought a map; mind you I did bring a compass). And even though I know these hills intimately, at one point I wasn’t entirely sure whether I haven’t walked too far along one of the hill tracks, thinking I should have met my turn off long time ago.

That’s the interesting thing about walking in fog: it changes the perception of depth and scale. Standing on the edge of a small (and well familiar) depression, maybe fifteen meters deep, I could have sworn it was a canyon five times that depth and miles long.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do once I got to the top of Silver Glen, but was having too much fun to miss the Cleuch; it was breezy.

The temperature never really seemed to have dropped below freezing the entire day, but the humidity of the clag and the wind made it feel like a definite winter; and so the buffalo parka came out while munching on my piece, a character from buffalo systems catalogue. But these are the sort of conditions in which buffalo excels, and the Special 6 shirt and trousers worked impeccably the whole day: never too sweaty, never cold, no pissing about with layers, just socks and underpants required. (The new trousers are turning out to be a good investment, and I think will be excellent for ski touring, once I make some adjustments to make them go over ski boots.)

While I had the hills to myself on my way up, from Cleuch onwards it got busy, the low cloud not putting folk off; our need to escape the world below to retain (or perhaps regain) our sanity too strong.

I expected the fog to be still lying down in the Hillfoots, but emerged out of it just a bit above the woodland line of the Ochil escarpment to a rather picturesque view of Forth basin; not the bright rich colours of the morning light, but more subdued brownish tones. It would have been very hard to capture as a photograph, but I could picture it clearly in my mind as an oil painting, the paint giving it dimensionality a photograph just could not.

Alas, I am a photographer precisely because I can’t be a painter! But as the bard said …