I managed to steal a few days at home; North in the Highlands, my childhood home. It is a place under pressure from expanding towns, struggling to maintain it’s own identity and not get swallowed up by ever-encroaching suburbia. That said, it is part of an incredibly beautiful area quite different from so much of people think of when they hear “Highlands”; it is low rolling hills and lush, fertile farmland. It is my home.

I’m not quite sure what gorse is doing in bloom just now (I’m not sure it knows, either) but it, alongside the rosehips and the occasional elderberry and unripened bramble, provides the most fantastic contrast of colours between the frost on the ground, the snow on distant hills and icy blue sky.