The last time I drove over Rannoch Moor it was late autumn and the slender curve of the moon was rising in a night filled with stars. For several miles the headlights picked up groups of red deer standing motionless and eerie beside a road that glittered with frost. And on this March morning it is cold again.
Buachaille Etive Mor and the other peaks that guard the mouth of Glencoe lie under a late fall of snow that reaches down to where the road climbs out of the pass. Ahead, the moor stretches white to the equally white mountains in the distance.
Right here the sun is shining on a landscape too spectacular to be spared only glances snatched from concentration on the road. At the first snow-free patch I pull over and get out of the warmth of the car. The air is cold, crystalline, and the mountain peak, dark rock beneath a burden of snow, is etched sharply against an achingly beautiful blue sky. Wisps of sunlit white cloud slowly shape and reshape themselves as they drift high overhead. In its starkness and vivid clarity the scene is as breathtaking as a Himalayan landscape, and it is only with reluctance I resume my journey.
At the summit of Rannoch Moor the temperature, despite the sunshine, reaches a new low. A pair of hooded crows – the only birds I have seen – pick eagerly at something half-hidden under the roadside snow. There is still blue sky overhead, but above the mountains the clouds have thickened to a pile of creamy white, while thinner and mistier clouds drift across and around their peaks.
At the edges of the loch, ice reflects glistening pinpoints of light as ripples of silver move gently across the open water. Down by the new bridge someone has found time to build a snowman – and crowned their efforts with an orange road cone for a hat.