Undiscovered Scotland

 

"Upland: A Journey through Time and the Hills" by Ian Crofton is a wonderfully evocative ode to the high places of Great Britain. It will resonate with all those who love the hills and mountains of this land, whether they give voice to that love through active exploration every weekend or more distantly, through dreams that ease a life lived in a city. This is a book we'd wholeheartedly recommend to all those people: it is certainly one we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

In his introduction, the author says: "I've lived most of my life in cities. But I've spent much of that life dreaming of hills - remembering them, imagining them, walking and climbing among them whenever I could. Hills gift a freedom to both flesh and spirit, taking us far from the sedentary routine of school or college or office, the ordered grids of urban streets. The hills present an unbounded world, a world of possibility, a world of questions, a space in which to pause and wonder."

The main body of the book comprises chapters organised geographically, from the small hills within sight of London via the Ridgeway and the Welsh Marches to Yr Wyddfa. Then we pass, chapter by chapter, through northern England - Kinder Scout, the Pennines, the Lake District - before concluding our journey in Scotland, with chapters about Ben Nevis, Skye, Suilven in Sutherland (our favourite mountain), and the Cairngorms. In each chapter you get a blend of background and historical information and the author's personal experiences. The result is both enticing and fulfilling.

You get a good sense of the book from the publisher's description: "Britain’s high places are many and varied, from the rolling hills and lush valleys of the Malverns to the vertiginous slopes of Snowdonia, the romantic peaks and vistas of the Lake District and the silent sub-Arctic tundra of the Cairngorms. As he explores our hills, moors and mountains, Ian Crofton is keenly aware of the echoes of those who have been there before, from prehistory to the present day. At the same time, he is finely tuned to the miracles of the present moment while among hills – a flash of bright moss in a bog, the swoop of an eagle above a skyline, a winter sun setting in a sea of cloud."

It continues: "Drawing on a lifetime of walking and climbing across Britain – and following an arc from the gentle Downs of southern England to the wild peaks of Scotland’s far north – Crofton is a well-informed and companionable guide, combining personal experiences with a keen curiosity about the history of mountain landscapes, the people who once lived, worked, suffered and died in them, and those who have wandered through them in wonder. The result is an enthralling meditation on the enduring yet ever-changing hills, on the transience of human experience, and on the shifts and twists of time itself."