Two days this weekend, two different coasts. But which one is your favourite?Is it the the neat ruler-line of the east coast under an enormous sky, waking to an early sun, a coast of clear boundaries, earthy smells and jagged rocks?Eyemouth: Or is it the inlet-lapped waters of the west, insinuating around you, dreaming of islands beyond the sunset?Ardmore Point: Either way, ...

One day I rode my bike to the hills... So starts my hillwalking book, The Weekend Fix. Loch Lomond from Beinn Chaorach: When I took my first trips to the Highlands I was technically still a child, and not allowed to climb the hills alone. But nobody else I knew was interested. Fortunately I was allowed to go on solo bike rides, and there were hills only a few miles from my...

I open the back door to let the dog out. A gust of freezing air barrels in and the ground glitters in moonlight. It's going to be a beautiful frosty day in a few hours. In a previous life, at this point, I would have left home to drive up the Highlands in this weather - or even gone the night before and camped or slept in the car - a more heroic and less domestic life than I le...

The darkness is raw at 4 degrees, not cold enough for snow or frost but the ground a blackened mulch of dark wet mud, and dampness climbing like mould from pavements to cover walls. The darkness, despite its name, is not really about nighttime, but by the nature of daylight. Because the darkness is a great hemisphere of grey clouds, thousands of feet thick, blocking out nine...

A dark reluctant morning, the wood heavy with summer's remains. The croak of a jay.A buzzard spots me before I see it and discreetly glides to a branch further away, but the pigeons are not so quiet, their wings gobbling in alarm. In the breeze, a single sycamore leaf rubs against another like a squeaky pub sign.  A honking skein of geese over the nearby stubble ...