Stefan Durkacz

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...

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that I now have a fundraising page on this blog. I'm using the walk to raise money for these two terrific charities, and you can read more about them and why I've chosen to raise funds for them here. Links for making online donations are also up and running. Venture Trust have published an article about the walk on their website, and there will also be a piece about it in the next edition of Scottish Wild Land Group's ' Wild Land News ', due out any day now (if you download PDFs of their excellent magazine, please do consider taking out a membership!). The walk is still several months away and you might want to wait until nearer the time to think about donating, perhaps when you're more certain I'm going to go through with it, or indeed successfully complete it!. That's fair enough, but please do keep it in mind. I believe we're at a cross-roads now, both in our understanding of how important nature and wild lan...

Tracing out the boundary of the Tay catchment was easy. The watersheds are clear on the maps, everywhere except for an area west-north-west of Kirriemuir. It's the mystery of the Quharity Burn. This water flows out of the southern fringe of the Mounth, only to be lost in a bog and have its waters stolen and rustled into the Loch of Lintrathen (off the bottom left of the map below) and eventually the River Isla. However the burn and its name are resurrected a short distance further on, re-starting the journey from small beginnings towards the River South Esk. Humans are probably the culprit here. The Inzion Burn, which steals the original Quharity Burn's waters and takes them south-west, is suspiciously straight. It looks like a channel deliberately cut to drain the bog. Newton Moss, at the head of the Inzion Burn, is still marshy according to the map. So here's an example of where the watershed has been altered by human intervention. What implications does it have for my ro...

My Trailstar tarp arrived just over a week ago, and had its inaugural pitching this morning. It requires a bit of work to get it ready for use. The parcel contained the tarp itself in a yellow stuffsac, a bag of stakes and pegs (five of each, which I'd added to my order as they're not included when you order the Trailstar), a tube of Silnet seam sealer (included), and a very long length of yellow cord for the pegging points (also included). There are no instructions provided. This is about as far removed as you can get from buying a pop-up tent from Decathlon: the customer is assumed to have some practical nous and not to need their hand held. Once you apply the seam sealer, the tarp is non-returnable, so taking care and having a reasonable idea of what you're doing at this stage is particularly important. This is a tarp designed to withstand stormy weather, and the stakes provided are therefore very substantial. The pegs are also bigger than I expected, much bigger than th...

Last week my mum and dad were down from Scotland for a few days' visit. The occasion was the birth of our second daughter, who arrived right on time at 9.30am on 10th September. Once things had settled down a bit I took my dad down to Kent to walk part of the North Downs Way . We covered about 10 miles, taking the train to Otford just north of Sevenoaks and following the route east to Vigo Village, before doubling back and heading for Borough Green to catch the train back in to London. Sadly the weather was terrible and it rained almost non-stop all day. Still, it was a good to get out and I saw enough that made me want to come back again for more regular walks along the many trails that criss-cross this area, once the first few difficult months of caring for our newborn are over. Our oldest should be ready by next year for little walks on these fairly undemanding trails as well. Also it was a good test for my dry bags and trekking poles, and to further wear in my North Face Hedgeh...

This week I made a big decision that I've been orbiting in ever-decreasing circles for months. I always knew it would end this way. I've just ordered a Trailstar tarp from US company Mountain Laurel Designs : MLD Trailstar (image from www.mountainlaureldesigns.com) Also in the post is a custom-made 'bathtub' groundsheet from Oookworks based near Castle Douglas in south west Scotland. So now I'm committed to living under a single-skin shelter for a month. The Trailstar is a shaped tarp meaning it looks like a tent when pitched, giving all-round protection from the elements. If all the rave reviews I've read are to be believed, it's very stable in windy conditions and not as noisy as a tent. Using a couple of trekking poles, it can be pitched in a variety of ways to suit the conditions: high with a big entrance for good weather, low to the ground so it sheds the wind in stormy weather. If I had to summarise why I've opted for a tarp rather than a traditio...