ALTHOUGH January is normally a stormy, dark and wild month, if you pick your day it can be remarkably benign and beautiful.

I LIKE travelling in January, provided, that is, travel is possible. It is a month when it is always better to travel hopefully, not really expecting to reach your destination that night, so that if you do it's a bonus.

WINTER has come for the first time in several years, and so a chance to get the skis out!

HOW do you find something to write about every fortnight, people sometimes ask.

I'VE said it before and I'll say it again - that part of north-west Sutherland around Tongue is one of the most special parts of Scotland, if not the world.

THERE'S an increasing incentive to enjoy the relatively wild places of this land before the so-called greens industrialise what is left.

FEW think of taking the A82 by Fort William and Crianlarich when travelling south.

ORKNEY is a great place for cycling. The distances are short, especially on the small isles, the roads are mostly quiet and on a bicycle you appreciate the smells, sounds and feel of the country in a way impossible in a car.

IT always surprises me how few people from Caithness have been to the Isle of Hoy.

A MARVELLOUS book has just been released by Ken Butler on the wild flowers of the North.

IT certainly beats your average greasy spoon café or service station.

CAITHNESS has enjoyed some superb weather this year – fine, warm and clear. Let nobody complain if the rest of the summer is cold and wet!

ACCORDING to good information (well, Google and the internet) the longest sea cave in Britain and the 10th longest in the world is "cave number two" of Sandside Head, at 230 metres.

WEATHER! The glens and mountains of the Highlands can provide as harsh an environment at this time of the year as in the middle of winter.

THE deserted Isle of Stroma often beckons in the sunshine across the blue seas from Canisbay or John O'Groats. If you possess a powerful boat it's easy to get there, but for those paddling under their own steam it's another matter.

SOMETIMES I wonder if anybody but me has ever climbed a particular selection of completely unrelated hills on the same day. But I'm certain nobody else has also managed to camp the night on top of one of them.

THERE are two very good ways of exploring the Caithness coast by sea.

PATCHY drizzle had been sweeping across Caithness for much of the day and the Sutherland hills were enveloped in cloud and veils of driving rain.

THE appeal of islands is one of those things that grows as you get older. Especially uninhabited ones. I would love to emulate Andy Strangeways in sleeping on all the 162 larger Scottish islands – by travelling there under my own steam, not in somebody else's boat as he did.

SLEEPER trains are a great way to travel, but after two consecutive nights going down then up the country the temptation was to head straight for home from Inverness.

GOLSPIE is a good base for a ramble. The sort of walk that takes in a variety of scenery and doesn't venture particularly high into the mountains.

CALL it climate change, global warming or just a blip, but our weather's certainly not what it was 30 years ago.

PROBABLY the most dangerous thing any of us do is to sit in a car driving along Caithness roads. They are, per mile driven, some of the most dangerous in Britain.

THE English Lake District is a compact and very civilised network of mountains.

A WINTRY mix of outings in a wintry mix of weather. There was still only a dusting of snow on the hills when I headed out for a day's amble over Beinn Stumanadh.

JANUARY is a month for which I have a great deal of respect.

IN that lovely crisp weather we enjoyed so much of over Christmas and New Year there was no need to travel any distance to experience the North at its best.

THE road from Lairg to Tongue runs through many miles of empty moorland country, passing mountain and loch, finally climbing from Loch Loyal under the slopes of Ben Hiel and Cnoc Craggie to emerge, suddenly, some 600 feet above the Kyle of Tongue.

THIS darkest month of year is the time to enjoy the light. With up to 17 hours of darkness on our northern shores, we must make the most of the remaining seven!

ALREADY this winter has given us more snow than we've had in the last two years.

AS the November gale lashes driving rain and sleet across the county, even the inhabited parts of Caithness can feel relatively wild, especially out in the country. But much has been tamed recently, especially with all the new houses going up.

FOUR seasons in one week, and every kind of weather. Rain, hail, sleet, snow. Thunder. Severe gales and flat calm, drizzle and warm sunshine. Frost and ice, immense, stormy seas and mirror-calm water. Crisp blue skies and long views and, this morning, damp fog with dripping autumn trees at Olrig.

I WAS most of the way down the mountain, jogging carefully down the rough and slippery path.

SCOTTISH independence is an issue on which I do not wish to comment. But what I think we really need is independence for the Highlands and Islands.

A PADDLE and a pedal. And a drive. The new road up the Ord from Helmsdale has certainly changed the character of the journey, at least in good weather – 10 minutes from Helmsdale to Berriedale and if you're listening to the radio in a modern car you might not even notice the hills. But have you any idea at all what scenery you're missing by travelling at such a speed?

I'VE known the "waterfall cave" for over 30 years. Countless times I've passed the spot when walking out along the Loch Eriboll cliffs towards Whiten Head.

IT WAS after eight and already turning towards dusk, the cloud was down with steady drizzle. I was cheating, having driven up to the Cairngorm mountain car park at over 2000 feet, and the sign on the path reminded me that I was setting straight off into a "wild mountain".

FOR 50 years little has changed on Stroma – a state of affairs which, I suspect, will not last much longer.

THERE'S nothing like a walk across familiar hills on a fine day. On autopilot I can just enjoy the scenery and the sunshine and the wildlife, with hours to think about this and that and no need to worry about route-finding.

WE take our wild flowers too much for granted in the Far North. I doubt whether there is anywhere else now in the whole of the UK which can put on such superb displays as Caithness and north Sutherland – but every year, even here, there are fewer.

THE morning was grey. Mist clung to the tops of the dark cliffs, drizzle and rain spotted from time to time onto the oily-calm sea. A mystery beckoned.

IF Bill Oddie and Springwatch have demonstrated one thing, it is how much wildlife there still is in this overcrowded island. With the right habitat and in the absence of persecution, wild animals and birds get on fine alongside people.

IT must be strange to know the A9 through the Grampians as little more than a road between Inverness and Perth. For me it is a route passing through familiar country – country I have crisscrossed on foot and by bike for nearly 40 years – and, though my eyes may be on the road, my thoughts are on the country through which it passes.

AFTER a brief 130 years of habitation, Eilean nan Ròn was finally abandoned in 1938. Since then the island houses, which are so prominently seen across the Caol Raineach from Skerray, have fallen into ruin and now only give shelter to sheep.

ANYONE can get into a sea-kayak and be paddling within minutes, which is fine if you're in a nice warm pleasure-boating pond. The difficult bit is to become safe and competent in the open sea.

A CAR is essential to reach many of the Scottish hills, according to an outdoor columnist in one of the Scottish national dailies. I beg to differ.

I'D hoped for a last sunlit walk across the snow-covered hills before the wintry weather gave way to spring. The sun failed to oblige – but it was still good to experience a taste of the winter which had waited until March to appear!

CAIRNGORM Mountain Ltd's sledging must be some of the most expensive in the world.

JUST an ordinary, early Saturday morning, cycling into town for some messages. Low sun lit the county in bright, clear light but the whole western sky was black, and already swathes of rain were moving in over Beinn Ratha and the moors beyond Reay.

THERE are many Strathans, but that beyond Melness, in a hidden valley under the vast moors of the Moine, must be one of the remotest.

THE distant cackle of a grouse from the hill greeted me as I opened the door on a clear and frosty February morning; the sun would soon be warming the air for another spring-like day.

MY only excuse for driving 400 miles south in the middle of January was that a car was essential when I got to my destination.

WHERE'S your favourite place? A question many find easy to answer. Not me. I have hundreds of favourite places where I would not wish to be anywhere else!

'THE bothy at the end of the world". That is how someone from England, even someone familiar with remote bothies, described the Croft House, alias Lochstrathy.

AT this dark and sometimes stormy time of year, it's easy to be deterred from venturing out.

MAINTAINING shelters in remote places – that's the role of the Mountain Bothies Association.

IF there's a theme which runs through this week's column, it's that of mornings. I'd probably always get up around five and be in bed by eight at night if there were no other considerations! Of course, the fact that most people don't live by such hours means that some compromise is needed – but I still like to be up and about early if possible.

WEATHER-WISE, it has indeed been a topsy-turvy year.

SPENDING a night alone on an uninhabited island is not, I suppose, a thing many people have done.

I NEVER rode a bicycle until I was 26. One of the incentives for learning was that a bike would give access to those remote place in the Highlands which otherwise require a very long walk down a very long track. Which indeed a bike does.

THE air is clear and the wind light, although the sky is still grey. A rare fine morning for the outer Orkney isles, especially given this summer's weather.

A COUPLE of years ago on a glorious May morning I was walking from Elgol on Skye to Loch Coruisk, bound for the Cuillin ridge.

PERHAPS it's the fault of those GPS car navigation systems, but fewer and fewer people seem to be reading and using maps these days.

ONE hundred wild flowers in a day. An easy target for a botanist in Caithness at this time of year – but then I'm no botanist and have no hope of identifying tiny white things or separating the different kinds of speedwells or hawkbits/beards/weeds.

WHAT is this life if, full of care, you have no time to stand and stare?” Indeed. It’s a quote that often comes to mind when travelling south, or north, through Scotland.

FEW folk visit Sgor a Chleirich, one of the two really dramatic tops of Ben Loyal.

TIME does strange things in the Sutherland hills.

NEVER have I made such a meal of the hill above Golspie as I did last week.

THERE'S nowhere quite like the English Lake District. It's a tangle of attractive mountains and lakes threaded by old-fashioned roads; the entire area would fit into that empty quarter between Ullapool and Dingwall.

BERRIEDALE has always been one of my favourite spots in Caithness for the sheer variety of scenery within a few miles.

FOUR seasons in a week. Summer in mid-April came to Scotland one Saturday, and even in our garden the temperature reached 21 Celsius.

AFTER the endless winter rains and saturated ground, the past couple of weeks of drying wind have transformed the countryside. The moors and hills still bear the yellows and browns of winter, but the air is bright and clear and the far moorland and mountain skylines are enticing. The golden plovers are calling from their nesting grounds and spring is in the air, even if the winds can still be bitter; it's a good time to venture out into the high flow country before the ever-earlier midges emerge.

HAS anyone been to the Rabbit Islands? Those from the west will be familiar with the view of them, the two largest joined together by a sandy beach, sitting just off Talmine at the mouth of the Kyle of Tongue. They look most attractive and interesting but, like all islands, are not so easy to get to.

THE popular TV series Life on Mars is based on the premise that somebody transported from 2007 to 1973 would find that world of the past as unrecognisable as if it were another planet.

COASTS rarely disappoint. On grey days with the moors and fields soaking wet and the hills enveloped in cloud, the cliff-tops and bays are the places to go.

THE mists of the past two days have finally cleared to reveal that lovely early-spring view across the county to the Knockfin Heights, now largely bare of snow but with the gullies highlighted in white streaks, while Morven wears a white skirt and Scaraben a characteristic white moustache below the summit.

SOMETIMES we can participate, sometimes we just have to observe. Today I have to be an observer, sitting on trains for the long journey north from England.

I'VE always liked winter with its dark and wild weather – but then I'm not a farmer with sheep clarting about in endless wet, no decent hard frost, and the fields too saturated to do any work.

THE otter, crouching under a peaty bank beside the burn, didn't see me appearing over a moorland crest.

OVER three million prescriptions for antidepressants were written in Scotland last year, and I'm sure that part of the reason why is that human beings were never designed for a life of constant high-tech stimulation by TV, internet, mobile phone, iPod, portable DVD, music systems, shopping, cars...

STORMY days are good ones for coastal walks. Cliff-tops are perhaps best avoided in the highest winds but in an ordinary gale, if you take care, somewhere like Dunnet Head can give a spectacular outing.

IT wasn't until my twenties that I took up running. Or jogging, to be more precise.

LATE yesterday I walked five miles out over the high moors into a cold gale of driving rain to arrive at the bothy at dusk.

HARDLY had the plane landed in Dublin when the heavens opened. It's not my idea of fun to pilot an unfamiliar hire car round the Dublin ring motorway – the busiest road in Ireland – in a torrential downpour!

FROM the Wicklow mountains, south of Dublin, it is a couple of hundred miles’ drive on the twisty Irish roads to the high south-western hills of Kerry. The mid-September day of clear, hot sunshine was, however, far too good to spend doing nothing but driving.

A COUPLE of months ago in this column we set off down the A9 to Inverness by car. Perhaps we’ll continue our journey south by train. Cars are simply a utilitarian way of getting quickly from place to place. Travel by train, bus, plane or boat is so much more like... well, real travel. I can never take anybody to a station or airport, or visit a ferry terminal, without wishing I were travelling myself – but have never felt any envy for anyone setting out on a car journey!

THIS is the best time of year to see the Scottish heather! As I sit typing on my computer, the calendar on my left displays an evocative picture of the highest of the Cairngorms, Ben Macdui, above the Lairig Ghru. It’s many years since I was last up there, yet another of those peaks longingly glimpsed in the distance on journeys up and down the country. Still, I managed to get quite close last week in a few hours between trains.

'TEN years on and still tri-ing.” So reads the slogan displayed on the back of the 10th anniversary Wick Triathlon T-shirt. And, indeed, it is ten years since my first attempt at what is known as the “sprint” distance.

IT'S been a month for birds. The day was typical of Orkney, haar coming and going, gleams of sun through drifting mist, the higher ground of Westray permanently enshrouded in fog. The empty beach of shell sand could have been at the end of the earth, the south-east wind driving choppy waves out of the mist onto the shore to break white in the seaweed.

I CAN never now cross that ford without looking out for crocodiles. “My” bothy – the one I’ve a particular responsibility for looking after – lies in the middle of Sutherland, some twelve long miles south of Strathy.

THERE are not many trees in the middle of the Sutherland flow country, and the copse of small birches was the only wood for miles.

ONE of these days I must write a guide to the A9. There can be few roads which pass so close to so many amazing places...

ALTHOUGH the island of Hoy is so near, it can take as long to get there as it does to reach Skye. Day returns from Caithness have become impossible since the Scrabster ferry was re-timed; this year there was a special day trip from John O'Groats but I had other commitments and couldn't go.