In the course of researching for my next book I came across the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame. Established in 2002, the hall of fame ‘celebrates and pays tribute to Scotland’s iconic sports men and women from the past 100 years, and inspires future generations’. The aims are noble and – as it led by…
Category: Scotland
Carnethy 5: a humbling lesson in hill running
Having only lived in Scotland for five months, snow still excites me. ‘It’s snowing!’ I announce to the household whenever the stuff starts falling from the sky. ‘It’s snowing,’ I tell my daughter, frogmarching her to the window. ‘Look at the snow,’ I point. ‘Look at it!’ She shrugs and walks off.
A love letter to the hills from the hill runner
I am running down a hill. I am running down a hill in Scotland. I am running down a hill while holding the hand of my shrieking two-year-old daughter. I am running down a hill while wincing from a dull, groaning pain in an ankle. I am running down a hill in jeans and a jumper.
The OMM: the king of all mountain marathons
Sitting at home, dry and warm and for the first time in almost 36 hours, I re-read the Original Mountain Marathon (OMM) blurb: ‘Held in some of most remote locations and at a time of year when conditions can be extremely challenging, the OMM is meant to be hard.’
Alpinism meets mountain running: the inaugural Glen Coe Skyline
Midges clung to the perspiring face of Emilie Forsberg as she caught her breath. Forsberg – an extraordinarily talented Swedish ultrarunner and girlfriend of the equally extraordinarily talented Kilian Jornet – had spent the previous eight hours running across towering summits and precipitous ridges in the Highlands as skyrunning came to Scotland for the first…
The unpredictable art of running blogging
I have been blogging for some years. I was a writer and journalist first. My original purpose was to support the publication of my first book, Heights of Madness, and my second and third books thereafter. Over time, heightsofmadness.com graduated into a running blog – a blog that last week pleasingly surpassed 50,000 visits. Writing…
10 inspirational places to run in Britain
Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh A mountain amid a city, a volcanic plug, a tourist honeypot. Run over grassy ramparts, slip beneath the towering Salisbury Crags, try not to stop running on a steep, winding, unending staircase, scramble the final steps to the rocky, breezy summit of Arthur’s Seat. While you are unlikely to be alone, you…
Wild swimming in the River Findhorn
There is a place where the River Findhorn and the Davoch Burn meet, a wild place where soldiers of Scottish legend once battled. Here the churning gorge of Randolph ‘s Leap is a whisper on the breeze. A beach of shingle drops sharply into the confluence. I am ankle-deep. A step. Now thigh-deep. The water…
Stretching is bad for your health
I dabbled with proper mountain running when I lived in Scotland. Ben Nevis, Paps of Jura, Goatfell, Loch Lochy. That sort of thing. One of my strongest memories of this period was the Slioch hill race, a 12-mile dash up and down a Munro and its top. It is brutal: two to three (or four)…
An anarchic run around the Seven Hills of Edinburgh
Running is an expression of anarchy. What other sport lacks limitations? Running is a metaphor for life; what path you choose to take. Running, essentially, is freedom. I was reminded of the glorious anarchy of running in Edinburgh. I had resolved to run the route of The Seven Hills of Edinburgh, a 14-mile loop (I…
What is Alan Hinkes up to at the moment? … and other questions
Traffic – is that the right way to describe people? – to this blog arrives via a plethora of web searches. Handily, WordPress lists these terms. Many are questions: some are perfectly logical, others make me question the sanity of the human race. However, according to the web search questions, people do not want much….
A ‘bad’ review and a right to reply
Reviews are important to writers. Although eagerly anticipated, they are feared. The views of a few – be they newspaper or magazine reviewers, or increasingly book sellers and book websites – guide the masses. Few outlets are as important as Amazon. I don’t know what percentage of my total book sales come from Amazon, but I imagine it’s a significant amount….
Heights of Madness 