Edinburgh. Scotland.

Each night I sleep in the car and each morning rise to the summit of Castlelaw. There is a reason I chose Scotland as the setting for Dreamwords and it lies beyond the obvious impulse to write about what you know. Perhaps it is only in seeing other places that you truly find the worth of your own. The Alps, The Himalayas, Pyrenees and The Grand Canyon dwarf the ripples of our land and the great cities of the world buzz with an energy hard to grasp in one lifetime. The oceans and seas teem with life in every corner and vast herds are stalked by monsters on great plains that could eat our open spaces without a burp. As crystal warm waters beckon in the Mediterranean, our cold grey shores invite waterproofs and wellies.

In scale and in record-breaking, something somewhere will likely top the bill before Scotland but in our thirst for labels it is easy to miss the magic mix that makes this country more than a storyteller’s dream. Here, you can walk a hundred miles with hardly a human in sight or veer slightly from your course at any point and meet a welcoming stranger or a town full of them. It is accessible to all and yet a proven training ground for the best climbers in the world. Few places allow you to touch nature in the raw with such ease. In Edinburgh, I love that you can walk from the city centre to the Summit of Arthur’s Seat with as much planning as a stroll along the High Street of any town. It is as though all the good bits of the planet have been condensed into a space that can fit your life.

To see this you have to get out there. I promise; it’s worth it.