Country diary: Green shoots in the ancient forest | Country diary

Glen Einich, Cairngorms: A wintry walk in the Rothiemurchus woodland is always glorious. To see some of its barer expanses starting to recover tops it offIn The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd writes wistfully of the ancient Caledonian woods of Rothiemurchus: "Not much is left now of this great pine forest." She had witnessed the vast fellings of both world wars to meet the need for homegrown timber; it was enough to prompt Frank Fraser Darling to say in 1949: "Our land is so devastated that we might as well have been in a battlefield ? see the wreck of ? Rothiemurchus that is no more."How I wish they could have walked with me there the other day. It was the fading of a cold snap, with snow still mottling the hills above and lying under heather clumps at our feet. In the fresh morning air, beauty lay at every turn; puddles were frozen into intricate patterns, a small lochan was a sheet of ice. Continue reading...