Stefan Durkacz

It all got a little bit epic a little too soon. Driving the wild road between Dalwhinnie and Spean Bridge the snow was swirling down and the road ahead reduced to two black furrows through the white. I tailed a lorry as it cut a swathe through the slush and made it past Loch Laggan and safely down below the snowline. I was on my way to meet David Lintern and Tim Mitchell . Dave and Tim have known each other for a long time, and Dave had kindly invited me to join them on a winter foray into the hills above Spean Bridge to bag a brace of Corbetts, Cruach Innse and Sgurr Innse. The sun was out as we set off; it was almost warm and we were soon sweating under sizeable packs full of winter gear. We pulled up past the Wee Minister who watches over Glen Spean and confers protection on the many climbers and walkers who pass him by. My load was probably heaviest of all. In order to accommodate my enormous synthetic winter sleeping bag along with everything else, I'd had to use my 100 litre

Walking in the woods at daybreak. A simple spartan ritual; a heavenly indulgence. A circuit of four or five miles from the door of the house I grew up in, I've walked it hundreds of times over the years. Coal trains once rocked and rumbled along the railway north of the woods. Then after bitter times the mines closed and the tracks were lifted, leaving only old ballast slowly reclaimed by grass, between blazing banks of August willowherb. In later years the track bed became a hardcore path, then a tarmaced cycle way. Progress. All around, cars multiplied, and houses, and new roads, supermarkets, retail parks, more aircraft overhead, computers, commuters and offices, more stuff and more stress. The woods conceal the distant beginnings of the long boom. There are hidden mine shafts and tunnels where coal was extracted by hand. But up here I can still find what I'm looking for. So can foxes. badgers, roe deer, and a host of birds, keeping the neighbourhood in touch with itself. Af

It's been a while now since I completed this wonderful walk. Whilst I won't deny it was primarily a personal indulgence which provided me with a stock of memories and experiences I'll never forget, I also raised some money for two outdoors-related organisations: Scottish Wild Land Group and Venture Trust. I've written about the whats and the whys here , but in short SWLG is an entirely volunteer-run group working to protect wild land for its own sake, and Venture Trust incorporate the transformative wilderness experience deeply into the personal development work they do with disadvantaged young people. In the end there is perhaps something in the unmediated outdoors that knows us better than we know ourselves. Anyway now the fundraising is over I thought I'd reveal the final totals raised: £410 for Venture Trust and £435 for Scottish Wild Land Group. A massive thank you to everyone who donated. Your money will help continue the fight to protect Scotland's magn

In the latest in an occasional series of weekend escapes from the Smoke, my friend Steve and I headed out to Tring in Hertfordshire to walk to the terminus of the Chiltern Ridgeway trail at Ivinghoe Beacon. A lung-tingling clamber through dormant woodlands on an ancient sunken trackway scored deep into the hillside, yawning off an early start, feeling the sharper cold of the country outside the urban bubble. This 5,000 year old route follows the Chiltern ridge from Wiltshire, a dry ripple of high ground, and perhaps a safer place to travel than down in the forested plain. Below the bare tops of the chalk downs, the Vale of Aylesbury disappears into the haze. Nowadays it's nearly treeless, pocked with chalk pits, housing, and warehouses, carved up by roads, gateway to the industrial Midlands, the white noise of traffic hanging over it like a pall. It's an effort to see into the past but up here amongst the tumuli you can sense an older, earthier world, and see why this place m