Highland Landforms by Robert Price

An authorititive short introduction to the underlying geology of the Scottish Highlands from the Grampians in the south north to Shetland and Orkney and east to St Kilda. 

Price begins with an chapter on the current shape of the land indicating the highest points and the differences between the water cycle (movement of water from the sea to the land and back to the sea) under glacial and non-glacial systems.  He then moves to the current geology of the area mapping the different rocks with an explanation of the formation of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.  Next there is an extensive chapter on the effects of glaciation on the area, before individual chapters on the Grampians, the north-central Highlands, the Ancient Foreland (far west coast and Outer Hebrides / Western Isles), the North-East Highlands (Caithness), Orkney and Shetland and lastly Arran, the Inner Hebrides and St Kilda.  A chapter on coastal landforms follows next, of great importance within the area as the rise and fall of land due to weight of ice has created extensive raised beaches, abandoned forms such as cliffs and stacks as well as the Machair.

Finally there is a brief discussion of the land as resource, the different uses it is placed to by people and how geology plays a part in their use of it.

Hollow Earth by John and Carole E Barrowman

13 year old twins Matt and Emily Calder are in the National Gallery in London and they are bored, it's summer, it's hot, their mother is talking to someone and they just want to go swimming.  Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres is tormenting with them with it's vision of people dozing in the sun on the banks of the Seine.  They take out a drawing pad to entertain themselves, but these children are extraordinary.  As they draw their picture it comes to life and they get the swim they wanted, and a world of grief from their mother.

The incident sets in motion a series of consequences and before long the family are fleeing for Scotland and the home of their grandfather, their father's father: the ancient Monastery of Era Mina on a tiny island off the coast at Largs.  Here they meet others who can do what they do and the people who guard them, a new friend Zach and find out more about the mysterious disappearance of their father and the Hollow Earth and the history of Era Mina.

Brilliantly paced and written, the Barrowmans' book carried me through and left me eager for the next instalment. The characters are well delineated and vibrant, setting and descriptions so clear that the magic could really be real.

The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane

MacFarlane completes his trilogy of nature writing with a meditation on walking. It can be read seperately but dovetails beautifully with its companions. MacFarlane's first book, Mountains of the Mind, was an exploration of how the cultural concept of mountains has changed over time. The second, The Wild Places, of the concept of wilderness and our need to reach for it. This third book, The Old Ways, speaks of the lost pathways that were used by our ancestors and are almost, but not quite, forgotten, like lost plague villages visible from the air as marks in a field. 

The book is divided into four parts, each covering a different geographical set of wanderings. 

The first section is of MacFarlane's journeys in England, as he traces the Icknield Way from his home outside Cambridge to the Downs and walks the 'most dangerous path in Britain': the Broomway tidal road across the Maplin Sands alongside Foulness Island, traversing holloways, chalk paths and a Roman Road, sleeping out to be woken by skylarks, crunching in the snow and striding toe to toe with his own reflection across wet sands.

Next he goes north to his beloved Scotland, exploring the trackless motorway of the sea road through the Minches to the Shiants, Rona and Sula Sgeir and across peat and granite moors, reflecting on a post glacial landscape ground out by the ice and bearing the signs of early human occupation. 

In the third part MacFarlane travels abroad to walk in Palestine, to follow part of the Camino pilgrim road in Spain and the pilgrim route around the feet of Minya Konka in Western Tibet, the most sacred mountain in Buddhism. In these less familiar landscapes his writing takes on a tone of wonder at new fauna, flora, weather, people and political strictures.

Finally he homes and returns to following the Ridgeway across Marlborough Downs, the South Downs to Eastbourne, circling in a gyre around a subject that McFarlane touches on again and again before focusing on it in the closing chapters. The life of Edward Thomas, killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917, poet, depressive and compulsive walker is addressed directly in 'Ghost', an account of Thomas' life with his wife Helen and his use of walking as a curative for his raging depressions. In the very last chapter MacFarlane opens out again and shows us the evanescent prints of early humans walking across a mud flat, now revealed by the tides. 

MacFarlane's book is not easy to categorise, it mediates on many aspects, some connected with walking such as the drive of wanderlust and the push of the curious mind, some with the wandering trails the mind takes on such a journey, of geology, deep time, human history, companionship, solitude and spirituality. Another wonderful book by an author I turn to with delight.

To The Hilt by Dick Francis

Al Kinloch is a reclusive painter living in a remote falling down bothy on his uncle's Scottish estate but then he is dragged back to London by his stepfather's illness, death and the issue of millions of pounds missing from his brewery.  Cue a brilliant fast paced thriller including the usual Francis tight plotting, violence, attempted murder and priceless ancient artifacts.