My first visit to Scotland was to the Cairngorms. Braemar, to be precise. It was for a photo shoot I was directing, and we were going to be using the magnificent Fife Arms hotel as the location. It being my first time north of the border, I thought I’d do things properly, so I managed to wangle a loan of the new Maserati Levante SUV and drove all day from Reading to Glasgow. There, I met up with my good friend and photographer Gerardo Jaconelli, the most well-connected man in the city (no word of a lie). It was 17 December. I arrived late. All I remember was getting out of car and feeling the wind on my face, like a slap on bare legs.
The following morning, the drive would take us just shy of two hours. Me in my Maserati; Gerardo in a Smart car. In December. In the Highlands.
All was well for the best part of the drive. Rolling hills expanding slowly into ominous munros, the light never shifting from a silvery veil. And then the snow started to fall, gently at first, then furiously thereafter. As we started to climb the road that would take us past Glenshee Ski Centre, I started to see Gerardo’s Smart car snaking along in my rear mirror, the back end slurring like a drunk. Cars were pulling into the side of the road to fix chains to the tyres. One family of four were hunched round the back of a saloon, helplessly scrumming against gravity and inertia. The Maserati was impervious and imperious. The Smart car was neither. Luckily, the model, Gavin, was not far behind in his Land Rover, and so I left Gerardo for dust, or rather quietly collecting snow and, with the brow of the climb in sight, put my foot down.
Remarkably, the descent was like being in a parallel universe, only without a drop of snow. The valley opened out, with columns of blackened heather split open by a river, and white-dusted mountains shouldering the burden of winter either side. The Cairngorms at this time of year are a raw and dangerous place, but magnificent all the same. What colour the landscape might lack, it makes up for with a moody potency. The rivers charge and roar. The evergreen trees huddle together in defiance. Chimneys pipe smoke up into the pale, close sky. Gerardo did, in fact, make it past the ski centre with the help of the Land Rover. Never in doubt, he assured me.
I returned to Braemar the very next year for a walking holiday with my girlfriend, only this time at the beginning of October, with autumn in full flow. We were dogged by rain early in the week, but were not deterred from striking out and finding munros to scale, rivers to follow or pine forests to get lost in. The colour palette was, of course, completely different from during my last visit, with the deciduous trees now blushing in an assortment of vibrant reds and oranges. One day, we visited Balmoral and walked extensively around the area, chancing upon the Queen’s favourite picnic place (apparently Prince Philip was a whizz on the barbecue and loved nothing more than coming to this spot and serving the family some local snags).
We also discovered the quite beautiful monument that Queen Victoria had built in honour of Prince Albert. Erected in 1862 and known as the Balmoral Pyramid, it is the largest and most famous of the Balmoral Estate’s 11 cairns (a pile of stacked stones used as a marker). It’s oddly beautiful. Aliens could have left it there. Queen Victoria was ahead of her time.
Autumn in the Highlands is a special time, and I would recommend it to everyone. But winter, too, has a draw; a sense of wildness and solitude on the one hand, balanced with the warmth of crackling fires and whisky on the other. Summer, I’m told, is the domain of midges, so I might give that a swerve, but I’ve got my eye on a spring excursion to Skye.
