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...

It doesn't get much quieter down here in the crowded south east of England than a still and misty first Sunday after New Year. Give or take the distant thunder from Gatwick, that is. From East Grinstead station I shlepped along muddy paths and fields past back gardens, then a bridleway down to Weir Wood Reservoir, right on the border between East and West Sussex. The shores of the reservoir are fenced off. With no disturbance from people or livestock, the water is fringed by a wilderness of trees and scrub, huge thorny bowed beds of bramble. Great crested grebe and common terns nest on the water. There's a mink problem though, and the plan is to attract otters to suppress the mink population. The woods were full of little birds trooping from tree to tree along the path. Blissful solitude in the early morning. There's car access to the west end of the reservoir, hence much litter and bonfire remains. Over the road and up to a dry sandstone crest - Standen Rocks, a favourite ...

The signs weren't good but I couldn't help feeling good. I was hurtling north through clag and drizzle on the A9, early on Saturday morning. A short notice work trip to Scotland, an evening visiting parents in Fife, then north for a dose of solitude and space in the anti-London, the beleaguered beauty of the Monadh Liath. Crossing Drumochter a veil was drawn back, the glen unwound ahead and a great rent of blue appeared in the clouds above. From Kingussie I walked up by the Gynack Burn. A stream of cars was arriving at the local golf course - different strokes for different folks. I was heading straight for the rough. Beyond the manicured greens the glen narrows and the road winds though hoary trees bearded with lichen. On the left the Gynack rumbles and chatters through it's wide rocky bed. It's still, gloomy, mild. Climbing gradually over sombre moors, the cloud softening then obliterating. A golden glow persists all day over Strathspey. There's an edge to things ...