When I slip out of the house just after six, the sky above is lightening to pale blue. Clouds fan across the wash in tiers of different shape and colour: the highest are like billowing silk, translucent and blushed with pink; the closest, a stippling of grey.
At the dark line of hills to the east, the clouds are thick and suffused with an amber glow. I head over one road and under the A9 – already rumbling with trucks – to cross the sheep paddocks that slope up towards my nearest hill. On one side, a very lived-in farm dwelling, on the other, a grand old house renovated for holiday lets, and further along, a crumbling bothy, gazing vacantly across the strath. The stand of giant Scots pines behind it are home to a vast rookery, but, for once, the birds are quiet.
