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View Full Version : Start the new year with some exploration-review



Nwicker60
26-Dec-11, 13:16
There a whole lot of scenic jewels out there, says rambler Mackay

MY late, journalist father, John “Hot News” Donaldson loved Caithness. During his career, he had the opportunity to join a newspaper in the south on more than one occasion, but shunned the chances, every time.
The only way he would have departed the flatlands of the county would have been if they had cut off that northern tip of Scotland and towed it south and that was never going to happen.
Rambler Dan Mackay shares Dad’s passion of the county but puts no boundaries on his love of the wide open spaces from Orkney and Shetland in the north to the Western isles and Glenelg..... and it shines through, in his recently-published book, Under a Northen Sky.
Mackay didn’t clock up the entire 43,000 miles of foot, otherwise he would probably still been out there. His trusty Drag Star motorbike enabled him to squeeze in as many of the scenic gems as possible, some of which were not all that visible and had to be discovered, off the beaten track.
The excellent selection of photos in refreshing black and white, with historical notes, gives us a good inkling why the landscape treasures, in all their different moods, have excited not just Mackay, but literary luminaries such as Highland novelist Neil Gunn and prompted them to wax lyrical.
Mackay exhorts you all to get out there and explore and gives an assurance that you wont be disappointed.
When better, to start your outdoor quest than in the start of a forthcoming new year. You needn’t go far...there's a whole of Caithness, out there, with which to whet your appetite.

Noel Donaldson