Footprints

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog by Mandy Haggith, Director of Assynt Foundation. As I climb up into the hills, along paths like the one up Suilven, I’m sure I’m not the only one to reflect not only on my literal footprints, but also on my wider impacts on the world. There’s something about getting out into nature that helps us ponder the big…

So Many Views of Suilven

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog by Mandy Haggith, Director of Assynt Foundation. Over the twelve years since the local community has owned Glencanisp Lodge, with its splendid views of Suilven, I have run seventeen retreat weeks for creative writers. Every one of the participants falls in love with the mountain and it has inspired no end of wonderful writing. Even people who have…

Changes

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 31st May 2017. It’s six weeks since my first visit on that cold, wet, muddy day and the landscape was still wearing its brown winter cloak. Not anymore! Lots of green lushness and flowers blooming. Heath spotted orchids line the track, and there’s sundew in the wet ditches at the sides. I see…

A Cheeky Raven and Cheeky Dippers

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 27th May 2017. It’s looking like a lovely day, and I’m walking in with the “top path team”, as I think it’s my last opportunity to shoot work at the Bealach for this season. The journey is becoming familiar now. A few miles later and we’re off the track and chatting to the…

Why would anyone do that?

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog by Chris Goodman, Path Project Officer for the John Muir Trust, from 17th May 2017. I’m stood on the Bealach Mor on the ridge of Suilven with path contractor Scott Murdoch. It’s mid-April, the first day of the Suilven path repair work and we’re looking over the site. But Scott’s attention is drawn by a stone wall on the…

A Hole Lode of Peat

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 18th May 2017. A heavier rucksack for the long walk today; I’m taking a tripod and a heavier camera with the intention of getting a time-lapse sequence. I’ve set the camera to take one photo every second for one hour, and this should turn into two minutes of time-lapse. Just got to get…

Suilven: Stone for the Mountain

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 2nd May 2017. The better weather I was hoping for; a lovely sunny day for the airlift of the bagged stone! Incredibly only a few days since the blizzard, and look at it! Amazing. OMG! Riding in the helicopter! Lucky, lucky, lucky! Safety briefing; yellow jacket and hard hat. And sunscreen. The chopper…

What’s different about Suilven?

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog by Mandy Haggith, a director of the Assynt Foundation. Suilven is often described as an ‘iconic’ mountain, and it is certainly distinctive, with its long side-profile and sugar-loaf mounded summit. From different angles it looks like an elephant, or a camel, or a whale.  From the sea it is an unmistakable marker post for finding your way into the…

Boulder Field Blizzard

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 24th April 2017. I needed to get up to the “boulder field” where Andy is bagging up stones ready for the airlift by helicopter up to the path workers. I’ve got directions, but I have to get across a river of variable and unknown depth. Fortunately, John from Glencanisp has offered to…

Suilven: A baptism of fog

, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape
Guest blog and photography by Chris Puddephatt from 20th April 2017. Alarm at 6am; sandwiches already in fridge; cameras in rucksack. Tea-to-go; drive to meet the workers at Glencanisp. So this is what Real Men look like: Scott, Alec and Donald. They walk the 11k in two hours; half way up Suilven to where they left their tools. I think…

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