Stefan Durkacz

Time has been short lately. It's only a month until we move to Edinburgh and there's much to sort out, and loose ends to be tied up at work. Little time for getting out of London for walks, but with a run of lovely weather it's hard to miss the swelling heart of summer even in the concrete jungle. A little innovation was needed to reconnect with the wider world, so for the past week I've been out and about when I can with the camera to local green spaces and waste ground to see what I can find, and, armed with a couple of pocket guides, to build up my ID skills. Even in the workaday streets around where I live the diversity has amazed me. Crouch and watch a little piece of weed-covered waste ground for a while and it's akin to your eyes adjusting to the dark. More and more details loom out - another species of wildflower, and another, and another. How many different types of bumble bee is that now? And how many hoverflies? And what's that little creature on...

Sunday's weather forecast went downhill all week. I looked on like a gambler who'd bet the farm on the wrong horse; lavish dreams of spending weather winnings on a long, grand high-level walk over the Mounth were scaled back until I found myself on a dark, wet morning at Spittal of Glenshee. The fairy glen has depth and history. Irish Celtic legends were transplanted here. There is a standing stone behind the church in Spittal of Glenshee. Remains of shielings and hut circles scatter the hills. The human connection here is long and misty, and Glen Shee remains a working landscape. Yellow leaves skittered across slick black tarmac as I set off. The Shee Water, swollen and peat-stained, slalomed through its bouldery flood plain edged with scrubby woodland, and surged under the single high arch of the Caulfield bridge. Today on the cusp of winter the land looked tired and worn. I traversed high above the grazing lands, following a deer fence. The Cateran Trail from the Spittal inv...

I sorely needed a break from marching up and down the Thames path for kicks, so two consecutive October weekends in Scotland have arrived at just the right time, allowing for a couple of day trips - slightly frustrating as I'm gagging to try out my Trailstar! That may have to wait until the Christmas holidays providing that the Express's annual prediction of The Worst Winter In Decades doesn't come true this time. For the first weekend I had cunningly arranged a work commitment in Glasgow for Thursday and Friday, allowing a day's walking on the Saturday and a return to London on Sunday. The in-laws in Glasgow had also yet to see our newborn, so we all piled on to the train at King's Cross on Wednesday afternoon. On Saturday, with work out of the way, Dad and I drove down to Glen Holm in the Southern Uplands near Broughton with the intention of climbing Culter Fell. The drive was a delight through autumnal countryside. After day upon day of rain and a forecast for ye...

Back from a long weekend in Scotland, the last until Christmas as the baby is due in September. It was a mixed bag, with an 8 hour round trip to Arnisdale on Saturday to climb Beinn Sgritheall followed on Sunday by a wonderful afternoon and early evening wander through the Ochils west of Glen Devon. The wind was the dominating feature of the weekend, closely followed by too much driving and an annoying cold I couldn't quite shake. The purpose of the pilgrimage to Beinn Sgritheall was to meet a friend who was down to his last six Munros. I wouldn't be able to join him for the grand finale on Mull in September but wanted to be there for at least one of his final few, hence this rather crazy arrangement. Myopic Munro bagging results in these situations where the driving outweighs the walking. Beinn Sgritheall is remote and brutally steep. It eschews the small talk and gets straight down to business with a relentless climb from sea level at Arnisdale to the summit. On a day of low ...

Until I started planning this trip I was really quite a blinkered Munro bagger. I've climbed 192 of the things now. I've explored plenty of other hills besides, but the driving ambition has always been to complete the Munros, and most of my excursions in the Highlands have been planned around that. My attitude is starting to change though. This year I've mostly confined myself, not in any strategically planned way, to below 3,000 feet - just visiting places I've long wanted to visit, or revisiting old haunts, and generally letting the eye and imagination wander over the maps. There are three reasons for this I think. Number one is the process of thinking through and mapping out the Tay watershed walk. Following the route from start to finish is the real objective - the peaks along the way just happen to coincide with it. The red felt tip line squiggling its way over the OS maps is like a river, and the task is to get in and let it carry me from one end to the other, and...