Reading the Quiet Parts of the Highlands

The busy Highlands are easy to find. They have car parks, a viewpoint sign and a coach turning circle. The quiet ones are usually up a single-track road, behind a gate, or at the end of a glen with a name nobody dares pronounce aloud. They are not secret in the sense of being unknown — they are simply easy to walk past.

Three reliably quiet corners for a nature lover: Glen Affric and its western arms, Glen Strathfarrar in Strathglass, and the rough ground north of Loch Maree. Add Strathconon, upper Glen Cassley and the coast around Coigach if you have a week and a full tank of fuel.

Timing matters more than location. Late April to mid June, then September to late October, gives you birdsong or fungi, no bracken, and far fewer people. Midges are worst on the west from mid-May to August, on still, damp evenings; the eastern glens are drier and kinder. Midweek out of season, you may see nobody at all.

Glen Strathfarrar and the Value of a Locked Gate

Glen Strathfarrar is the best argument in Scotland for a locked gate. Vehicle access is limited to a small number of cars a day, at set times, and the road runs roughly ten miles from Struy to the dams of Loch Monar. Walk or cycle in and you have a glen to yourself. The river Farrar keeps a fine ribbon of alder and birch, with ancient pinewood fragments clinging to the slopes above.

This is deer country, so go early and go slowly. Golden eagles work the ridges; ravens will tell you where they are before you see them. Watch the mossy stumps for pine marten scat, which is dark, twisted and full of berry pips and beetle cases. Check the seasonal gate times before you set off, and never assume you can drive out when you like.

Rowan, Birch and the Old Protections

The folklore of these glens is largely woodland folklore, and much of it is still legible in the landscape. Rowan was the great protective tree: planted by the byre door, tied with red thread — rowan tree and red thread haud the witches a' in dread — and used to stir milk and churn butter. A rowan growing out of another tree was reckoned especially potent, and a lone rowan standing untouched in a clearing is usually there because nobody wanted to be the one who cut it.

Birch was the Lady of the Woods, its wood used for cradles to protect a baby, its twigs for besoms. Hazel carried wisdom: the salmon of knowledge gained its learning from hazelnuts. Lone hawthorns and rowans beside old shieling sites are often called fairy trees, and the tradition of leaving them alone is a good one — leave no ribbons, coins or cloth, which are litter with a story attached. The each-uisge, the water horse, is said to haunt several Highland lochs. Folklorists advise against stroking strange ponies by a shore. So do I.

Foraging with a Light Foot

In Scotland, the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 gives responsible access to most land, but foraging sits in greyer water. Picking leaves, berries and fungi for personal use is generally tolerated; uprooting any wild plant without the landowner's permission is an offence, and picking for commercial use needs consent. Avoid nature reserves and Sites of Special Scientific Interest unless you know the rules, and leave juniper entirely alone — it is protected and slow-growing.

• Blaeberries — late July to September on pinewood floors and heather edges. Staining, abundant, superb with cream.
• Chanterelles — August to October on mossy banks among birch. They smell faintly of apricot. Avoid the similar but suspect false chanterelle by checking for true, blunt ridges rather than sharp gills.
• Ceps, or penny buns — September under pine and birch. The underside should be sponge, never gills.
• Wood sorrel — April to June, three heart-shaped leaves, sharp and lemony. A few leaves lift a cheese sandwich.
• Rowan berries — September onwards, bitter raw but excellent as a jelly for venison or lamb.

Learn a handful of species thoroughly rather than many badly. The deadly webcap and the destroying angel both grow here, and neither forgives a confident guess. Take a third of what you find, cut rather than pull, and carry a basket so spores drop as you walk.

Crafts You Can Learn in an Afternoon

Traditional Highland woodland crafts are mostly small, portable and cheap to try. Green woodworking — carving a spoon from birch, alder or sycamore with an axe, a knife and a crooked knife — is the easiest entry point, and you can learn the basic grips in an afternoon. Hazel hurdles for fencing, woven from coppiced rods, need permission and a coppice, but the principle is simple and satisfying.

Heather besoms are made from heather cut cleanly above the moss line, bound with twine or split withy. Birch bark containers need bark taken in early summer, when it peels, and never from a living tree you want to keep. Birch tar, rendered slowly from bark, waterproofed boots and bindings for centuries. Cordage from lime bark or nettle stems is a good rainy-day skill and costs nothing but patience.

Wildlife, and How to Actually See It

Seeing wildlife is mostly a matter of sitting still in the right place at the wrong time of day. Pine martens are best at dusk in the old pinewoods around Loch Arkaig and Glen Affric. Crested tits and Scottish crossbills keep to mature pine; listen for the crossbill's chipping call overhead. Red squirrels prefer hazel and pine edges, and are far tamer in quiet glens than in busy ones.

Black grouse lek at dawn in April — watch from a distance, in dull clothing, and never approach the lek. Otters fish the sea lochs on a falling tide, an hour either side of low water, and are easiest to find by their spraint on flat rocks. Sit. Wait. Bring a flask. The wildlife will not come to you if you are walking.