Wild Cooking Scotland: A Foraging & Cooking Journey
This is the third in our foraging and wild cooking series exploring different landscapes and ingredients within the UK. To follow the routes and for more ideas, visit Viewranger.com.
Clouds painted in tones of grey and white stream overhead, hinting at wilder conditions to come. On the verge stand our packs, slowly being filled to capacity with food, firewood, sleeping bags, mats, pots, water and a sneaky bottle of wine or two – all hinting at a long night beside a fire with good friends and full bellies. Ahead of us lies a meandering trail to the deserted village of Peanmeanach and its bothy.
We’re barely underway before our photographer catches splashes of purple and red out of the corner of her eye. Blackberries, ripe and ripening, dot the side of the trail. Tasting the berries, we’re surprised at the difference in tartness between plants just metres apart. It’s not long before two of our canisters are full to the brim.
Shouldering packs again and on the move, we become aware of a musical clanging, and expect at any moment to see a bunch of ski-mad Austrians or possibly alpine cows appear from the forest below. Instead our photographer grins, shrugs and points to the myriad water bottles and tin cups hanging off her pack. Noise? Or perhaps homage to alpine mountains and Mike Oldfield, we don’t know. All we know for sure is that any hint of the name ‘Daisy’ uttered from our lips will result in some serious repercussions.
Descending the trail towards Loch Dubh (Black Lake), we gather handfuls of dried twigs strewn on the path and dotting the undergrowth – good kindling for tonight’s fire. We pause briefly on a tiny concrete bridge, waiting in anticipation for the old Fort William to Mallaig train, which passes underneath with whistle shrieks and clouds of steam. Brief moments of nostalgia are evoked – old movies and stories from parents and grandparents.
ROUTE
Difficulty: Easy
Distance: 11km round trip
Duration: 2 hours each way
A fantastic walk to a deserted village with great coastal views to both sides of the Ardnish peninsula and out towards the Hebrides. A well defined track over rough terrain. Some boggy stretches between the last section of forest and the old village.
Conscious of the ever-shifting weather, we snap back to the present. Harry Potter, the Railway Children and black-and-white photographic images drift away like the steam from the locomotive as we climb slowly up through forest still damp with last night’s rain.
Scrambling over rocks we emerge onto proper Scottish moorland: hints of heather, purple, brown and dark green, interspersed with the greys and light yellow-greens of lichen-covered stones and boulders. The wind gusts and swirls in from both sides of the peninsula and over small skerries dotting the lochs, Loch nan Uamh to our north and Loch Ailort to the south, recalling lyrics from the Kenneth Macleod song – ‘The Road to the Isles’.
Tacking into the wind, we negotiate brackish pools dotted with stepping stones and slippery stretches of bog, pausing once again to take in the splendour of the view. It seems almost like a caricature of the Scottish Highlands: framed by two rocky crags, a burn tumbles down over water-rounded rocks beside our trail, while below lies our home for the night, a remote bothy, stranded on a shoreline amongst the remnants of a long-deserted village.
Gnarled roots and trunks surround us in the woodland, and here, another find for tonight’s dinner – clumps of wood sorrel, still juicy enough to elicit the taste of a Granny Smith apple skin. Out onto reeds and grassland. The swish and swash of green stems takes John and Liz back to childhood memories of Michael Rosen’s book, We’re going on a bear hunt.
This is what’s amazing about the outdoors. How it fires our imaginations, encourages us to revel in our memories. Tonight we’ll talk about stories from our pasts and dream of moments yet to come.
Venison steak with blackberries, mushrooms, beef shin and root vegetable casserole
