IT'S interesting that the news of the Scottish Government's rejection of the Lewis windfarm proposals broke the same day as Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called for a moratorium on windfarm construction in France.

I WAS encouraged by those who came along to the public meeting in Newtonmore last week to discuss the controversial proposals that could see large areas adjacent to Loch Laggan and Loch Ericht earmarked for large-scale windfarm development.

HIDDEN away from the rest of the world by the shoulders of its craggy mountain, Ardverikie Wall of Binnein Shuas looks south over the slim, water-filled trench of Lochan na Earba to the hills of the Arverikie Forest.

I'VE been encouraged by our local Highland councillors, who have supported my plea for an extension of the consultation on the Lochaber Local Plan as it affects those areas of Badenoch and Strathspey that lie outside the Cairngorms National Park boundary.

A REPORT published on behalf of the Scottish Government by Glasgow Caledonian University suggests that wind farms could cost Scotland's tourism industry millions of pounds and hundreds of jobs.

WALKERS, keepers, shepherds and forestry workers are being encouraged to keep their eyes open for ticks and help in the UK's first ever public survey into the spread of the disease carrying insect.

THE clouds were low on the hills, heavy overnight thunder-storms had left the track squelching underfoot but I was in good, boisterous company.

REGULAR readers of this column will be only too aware of my dislike of onshore windfarms.

EVERY year, more than 100,000 people climb to the summit of Ben Nevis, Britain's highest summit.

THE great John Muir had a simple theory for protecting the wild splendours of places like Yosemite National Park in California from developers.

THERE has been quite a lot of comment in the press recently about mountain rescue teams, predominantly in the English Lake District, seeing a significant increase in the numbers of call-outs from walkers who use mobile phones as a convenient way of telling someone they are lost and need help.

THERE is currently a petition on the Prime Minister's website which is calling for wild camping to be made legal in England and Wales, as it is in Scotland.

A COUSIN of mine, who lives in England's darkest south, often takes himself off for a week or two at a time with the sole purpose of counting birds.

THE day after what was supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, I was fair cheered by the leaked news that Scottish Government ministers were minded to refuse permission to build what would have been Europe's largest wind farm on the Isle of Lewis.

A FRIEND wrote to me last week telling me about a new house he was building – an eco house with a green oak frame, oak cladding, sheepswool insulation, turbine in the burn, etc – on the west coast.

I WAS sad to hear of the death of Sir Edmund Hillary on Thursday evening.

THERE is often a perceived notion amongst hill-bashers that Corbetts, because they are lower in height than Munros, must be easier to climb.

BRICKBATS and bouquets. Who has earned our praise and congratulations in the past year and who has earned our scorn?

I'LL BE heading for old haunts over the festive period, easy walks suitable for the short days of late December, allowing me to get home in plenty of time to continue the festivities.

A NUMBER of years ago I read a book by Charles St. John, a Victorian naturalist, who described a journey along the River Findhorn.

I HAD the pleasure of opening a new footpath earlier this week that will ease the effort of reaching the fabulous north face of Ben Nevis.

I'M wary of inventing personalities for our mountains, but there is little doubt that some hills do have character, tempting us into twee anthropomorphism.

WITH the current strength of the pound against the dollar you'd be forgiven for thinking that overseas visitors might think twice about visiting Scotland on holiday.

I REMEMBER wandering the hills with the late Tom Weir when he asked me why I had never become a member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

I KNOW it's almost sacrilege for a mountaineer to admit it, but I'm afraid I'm not a great lover of snow.

TWO events have given me hope that Scotland's young rock climbers might flock back to the mountains where the sport belongs instead of playing around on indoor climbing walls or attempting vertical gymnastics on roadside boulders.

SCOTLAND can justifiably claim to have some of the finest landscape photographers in the UK and that's perhaps not surprising when you compare the type of subject matter that exists in the Highlands and Islands with the rest of the country.

I THOUGHT the unseasonal warmth of the early morning sun had gone to my head.

THE car park in Glen Doll was rain-soaked and the car's windscreen wipers were working overtime. After travelling the best part of 100 miles we were loath to simply turn round and drive home again, although the temptation was great.

A RECENT television show, which I missed, has been getting a lot of comment on various hillgoers’ websites. It was all about finding the best view in Britain and I believe the view over Wastwater in the Lake District’s Wasdale actually won.

I'VE HAD more than my fair share of bothy nights and while I wouldn't claim to be a lover of the bothy life I am aware that many people enjoy the occasional camaraderie of sharing one of these open shelters with like-minded souls.

I'VE known the hill-walker cum mountain runner Ronald Turnbull for some time.

SOME readers may be familiar with Robert Macfarlane's book, 'Mountains of the Mind'. It was published to wide critical acclaim a few years ago.

CAIRNGORM Mountain Rescue Team Leader John Allen last week left the volunteer service after 35 years, and now another giant has bowed out.

I SUSPECT there are more mountaineers, hillwalkers and trekkers, per heads of population, living in the Badenoch and Strathspey area than anywhere else in the world.

I WAS walking an old right of way that runs from Bellabeg in Strathdon over the Ladder Hills to Glen Livet. As the route climbed out of Glen Nochty it passed an old house that goes by the curious name of Duffdefiance.

I GUESS we can't do much about the weather, and if you organise a big event in the Scottish mountains, then you are putting yourself very much at the mercy of Mother Nature and her often fickle ways.

I HAD planned to stay at home this coming Saturday to tune into BBC Scotland's monumental outdoor broadcast from Loch Avon here in the Cairngorms, where four teams of climbers will attempt rock-climbing routes on the Sticil, or Shelter Stone Crag and Hell's Lum Crag, that great ocean of granite that soars up beside Coire Domhain.

WE had driven south to spend four or five days in the Borders, in search of sun and dry ground. After a series of wet weekends and mountain soakings, I needed a change, and the borderlands gave us just that.

IT'S ironic that in the middle of the worst summer weather on record the future of Scotland's finest mountain weather forecasting services has been in jeopardy.

HE CALLS himself the Island Man and he is set to become the first person to sleep on every Scottish island of 100 acres (40 hectares) or more, a total of 162 islands.

WE never knew of his like in Scotland. Alfred Wainwright was a product of English northness, a working-class man from Blackburn, Lancashire made good.

TELEVISION programmes about walking and climbing are like buses. You wait around for ages hoping one will turn up then a bunch of them arrive at the same time.

I WAS a little surprised when BBC Radio Scotland rang me up and asked if I'd review an exhibition of modern art for their lunch-time arts programme, the Radio Café.

THERE are few heroes in my little wilderness world, although, as a youngster, I admit that I rather hero-worshipped a Welsh long jumper by the name of Lynne Davis.

WHENEVER I think of my old friend Alex Gillespie I think of Nevis – the hill and the glen. Originally from Edinburgh, Alex and his wife, Mary, have lived in the shadow of Ben Nevis for even longer than I've known them, and that must be over 30 years.

WELL, it seems that Foinaven in Sutherland has failed to measure up!

A MEETING took place in the Hillfoot town of Tillicoutry last Sunday, a meeting and protest walk set up by disgruntled residents of the towns and villages that lie at the foot of the Ochils.

THEY appear like a promise as you drive up the long haul of the M74, the first real hint to visitors that Scotland really is a land of hills and mountains.

MUNRO baggers know it well. The jagged summits of the seven-mile long Cuillin ridge on the Isle of Skye have provoked nightmares amongst many of those who have ambitions of climbing Scotland's 284 three-thousand foot mountains.

IT wasn't the best day for a walk, but we were working to a tight BBC schedule, and even our national parks are as liable to suffer the excesses of the Scottish climate as much as anywhere else.

IN THIS column a few weeks ago I told you that the Munro Society had been speculating on the heights of two of Scotland's mountains, Foinaven in Sutherland and Beinn Dearg in Torridon.

WITH the question of whether the Corbetts of Foinaven and Torridon’s Beinn Dearg are actually high enough above sea level to be classified as Munros being asked, it seems that another threethousander could be up for re-measurement.

I WAS delighted to read the comments of our Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber MSP candidate, Fergus Ewing, who is campaigning to be returned to Holyrood, about wind farms in last week's "Strathy".

ANYONE who regularly drives north up the M9 past Dunblane will have noticed the 37 spinning turbines on the Braes of Doune, the first view visitors to Scotland get of the Highlands.

SPECULATION about the height of the Ganu Mor summit of Foinaven in Sutherland and Beinn Dearg in Torridon shows what a curious pastime Munro-bagging really is.

IS NO Scottish hill safe from a Labour politician? I’ve never voted in an election purely on the basis of a single issue but come May I most definitely will. And I won’t be voting Labour.

MY OLD pal, Lesley Riddoch, recently joined forces with the Provost of Angus Council, Councillor Bill Middleton, himself a keen hiker, to open the new Glen Prosen Bunkhouse, which looks set to become a firm favourite with walkers and group visitors alike.

EVER since reading a clutch of Nigel Tranter novels about the Wallace, the Bruce, the Marquis of Montrose and the Black Douglas I've been intrigued by the area of the Borders known as Ettrick.

LAST weekend I completed my second term as president of the Ramblers Association in Scotland and I took the opportunity to call for the scrapping of the Beauly-Denny Powerline Public Inquiry.

AS PART of the Fort William Mountain Festival, I had been asked to speak at a seminar that looked at the links between mountains and culture and whether there could be a convergence between those who climbed hills and mountains for recreation, and those who are involved in other aspects of Scottish culture, like writers, musicians, artists and dancers.

SO OFTEN we draw on the dramatic scale of our mountains and wilderness areas to appreciate something of man's insignificance, but just occasionally we can be audacious enough to believe that we can conquer it, or tame it for our advantage.

IT'S a long and winding nine miles from Cannich village to the head of Loch Mullardoch, and on a bleak and wintry Sunday morning, even the sight of red deer stags by the roadside and snow-plastered hills couldn't dispel the gloomy austerity of the place.

LIKE so many others problems facing us today the high rise in the incidence of Lyme disease in the UK can probably be put down to global warming.

I WAS delighted last week to address the Scottish Outward Bound Association at their annual charity fund-raising dinner in Glasgow.

I ALMOST didn't bother. Torrential rain swept along Strathfillan and the hills were hidden in a mire of mist and cloud.

I WAS heading for the horseshoe ridge of hills that lie above Achnacarry, ancestral home of Cameron of Locheil.

A GAELIC bard once described Glen Tromie, just south of Kingussie, as Gleann Tromaidh nan Siantan – the glen of the stormy blasts.

AN OLD friend of mine, Gordon Donohue, used to manage the distillery at Dalwhinnie, and he once took me to task because I had described Tomintoul as the highest village in the Scottish Highlands.

A NUMBER of years ago I made a television programme for PBS in the States. They wanted a documentary on the life of John Muir, the Scots-born environmentalist, and invited me across to Yosemite National Park to take part as a kind of token Scot.

IT'S Christmas and Scotland's hillwalkers have been given a rather nice, if unusual, Christmas gift.

HAVING agreed to speak at a conference on sustainable tourism I rather alarmed the organisers by suggesting I would take a stance against onshore wind farms, as I see it as the biggest single threat to the tourist industry in Scotland.

I WAS delighted to hear that the board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority agreed to recommend to Scottish Natural Heritage that the old Wade Road between Aviemore and Dalraddy be used for the proposed extension to the Speyside Way.

I HAD been enjoying a couple of days walking in the Borders, trying to dodge the winds and the showers to climb Hart Fell and Broad Law from Tweedsmuir.

DURING those heady, distant days when the formation of the Cairngorms National Park was being discussed, it was abundantly clear that almost everyone concerned wanted to see a large boundary, bringing as big an area as possible into the protection of the park.

OF ALL Scotland's hill and mountain areas, the region that I'm probably most unfamiliar with is the Ochils, that lovely little hill range that rolls down from the Highland line towards the north banks of the River Forth. It's an area under threat from a proliferation of large scale wind farms.

ONE of the various hats that I wear is president of the Backpackers Club, a UK-wide club of some 1,300 assorted souls whose passion is heading off into the wilds for a few days with everything they need for survival, and comfort, contained in a rucksack on their back.

NEGOTIATING convoys of Tesco and Morrison trucks on the A9 two or three times a week could well test the patience of St Christopher, but the patron saint of travellers had a better, albeit slower, mode of travel than we do today. He walked.

AFTER three weeks trekking across the High Atlas mountains of Morocco, there was a sense of visual relief at arriving home to a colourful Scotland, deep in the grasp of its autumn pageantry.

SOME of the UK's greatest polar explorers gathered together at the Royal Geographical Society in London last Wednesday to pay tribute to a Laggan man who is regarded by many as a living icon.

THERE'S a definite inequality about some of our Munros. You can wander up the Cairnwell, for example, from the Cairnwell pass at 2199ft, which doesn't leave much of the mountain to actually climb.

THERE appear to have been very few problems in Scotland’s countryside since the Land Reform Act came into practice, with most folk aware that public access carries responsibilities.

FROM my elevated eyrie by the summit of Morven in Aberdeenshire the world around me lay in two distinct halves – one in glorious light and the other in abject blackness.

I HAD telephoned him to arrange an interview for a radio programme and when I asked him where exactly he lived in Strathmartine he said; “Just ask anyone where the blind auld bugger lives”.

HARD on the heels of last week’s comments about a proposed wind farm near the Sma’ Glen in Perthshire came the news that the Deputy Enterprise Minister turned down the development.

DRIVING back to Badenoch from Glasgow during the week a report on the radio told me that the A9 was blocked at Perth, due to an oil spillage.

MY WIFE, Gina, and I had arrived in Castlebay on the Isle of Barra with a distinct sense of foreboding.

I’M DELIGHTED to see that the influential John Muir Trust has followed on the heels of the Ramblers’ Association and launched a major campaign against the growing threat of wind farms in the Scottish countryside, describing them as a “major threat” to unspoiled areas.

FIVE years ago, a strategy to manage the landscape of Ben Nevis was published and as part of that strategy, the Nevis Partnership, a coalition between Highland Council, the John Muir Trust and other interested parties, was established.

ON A recent trip to climb Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey I cursed myself for not having a better knowledge and understanding of wild flowers.

CONGRATULATIONS to Andrew Thin, convener of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, for his lofty elevation to chairman of Scottish Natural Heritage. It’s a huge jump in terms of responsibility and Andrew will, most certainly, have to face a considerable number of new challenges.

I’M FINDING it difficult to remember such a sustained period of warm weather. I’ve heard a number of people say, “If this is the effect of global warming, then bring it on”, but I suspect such a positive spin on climate change is a little premature.

THE Munro Society is encouraging hillwalkers to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Hugh Munro of Lindertis in Fife, the compiler of the original Munro’s Tables in 1891.

GINA and I were climbing the lower slopes of a wonderfully named hill called Beinn Liath Mhor a’Ghiubhais Li (byn lee-a vore a yoo-ash lee) above Loch Glascarnoch, and while it was a glorious day, we roundly cursed the peaty, boggy ground we had to cross.

WITH the current political climate, chatterings of a nanny-state and the diminishing of people’s so-called rights, it seemed like a good time to visit the Isle of Jura. Wasn’t it here that George Orwell wrote his great satirical treatise – 1984?

DO you know what Cairn Gorm actually means? Or have you ever thought about the meaning behind Balmoral, Lochnagar, Tomintoul or Kingussie?

I STOPPED at the MacDonald Hotel in Kinlochleven a few weeks ago, just as winter was giving way to spring.

IT WAS meant to be a birthday treat, but a thought suddenly flashed through my mind that if I didn’t take care there may well be no more birthdays.

AT THIS time of the year my natural inclination is to go west when I want to climb a mountain, but occasionally I'm blessed by doing the opposite.

WITH a bit of luck, summer might have arrived.

AN OLD friend, Dennis Gray, a former secretary of the British Mountaineering Council, has just produced a CD of four climbing songs.

TWO Fort William-based fell runners, Kenny Stuart and Kenny Campbell, have every right to feel a little aggrieved this week.

I THINK it's fair to say that over the years I've given Scottish Natural Heritage a bit of stick and, while I'm sure the various board members have lost little sleep over my criticisms, I still have the feeling that while the organisation is good at conserving wildlife it is not quite so good at encouraging the public to enjoy or appreciate it.

I WONDER how many 'Strathy' readers experienced their first real taste of the outdoors through the Scottish Youth Hostels Association.