One of my favourite places in Britain is the Highlands of Scotland. I keep coming back to it (there here as some photos from previous trips here), and miss it immediately after I’ve left, and start planning the next trip. If it wasn’t for the weather, I would move to the Highlands in a heartbeat (but I just can’t deal with rain for more than a couple of months of the year ;)).

This Christmas, like several times before, we headed to Scotland to spend the holidays there surrounded by friends. As our luck would have it, it was bang in the middle of storm Barbara, with winds going up to 60mph in places, so we had to be really strategic about our explorations.

On the first day there we took advantage of good weather (meaning no wind or rain) and headed to Dunnottar Castle, a dramatic clifftop ruined castle, surrounded by sea on 3 sides (yes it was a very steep climb up the steps there!). The winter sun was hanging low and bathing the whole place in the most gorgeous golden light. I really enjoyed finding little pockets of light throughout the castle and experimenting with capturing interesting play of light and shadow. Alas, my son had his own ideas on most occasions and wasn’t too keen on being photographed that day.

Now that he’s nearly 6 this happens more and more, and although I do get frustrated (why or why won’t he just run ahead of me and let me capture beautiful carefree images?!) I still refuse to ask him to stand still and ask him to say cheese for me, as it totally ruins the experience of the enjoyment of the place for me. And even these few captures that I have of him exploring Dunnottar Castle are enough to remind me of our time there, and hopefully get him itching to come back when he gets a little older.

Over the next few days we ventured out only very briefly as it was blowing quite mercilessly! The storm was hitting near 50-60 miles per hour and when the snow finally came to our village, the farm access road which we needed to drive out onto the main road got completely covered in snowdrifts too tall for our car to go through! Thankfully, the cottage we were staying in had plenty of entertainment so we relaxed, cozied in and ate non-stop! :)

On the last day we were finally able to venture out as the storm had passed. Our access road was still covered in snow but half-a-mile up the road it looked as if the snow never even happened. We didn’t want to venture too far out as the days were short and we still had to pack ahead of the overnight drive back to London, so I looked up a couple of nearby places which included St Mary’s Kirk. If you’re an Outlander reader, you’ll be interested to know it reminded me so much of St Kilda in Voyager, a church where Claire, Brianna and Roger go and where unexpected discoveries – I’m trying not to spoil anything here! – are made.

Like it’s book version, St Mary’s Kirk is an ancient ruined church built on a steep hill. The resemblance was of course reinforced by the fact that there were many, many James Frasers buried in the churchyard (yes, I probably have an unhealthy obsession with very old churchyards).

Another great place was Kildrummy Castle which was sadly closed for winter, but we still got to walk around a little bit and even found a nice patch of snow there. And finally, very much off the beaten path was Sunhoney Stone circle, which required a muddy treck up private farmland and climbing over some fences to get to. Sadly the sun was already down behind the nearby hills so no amazing photographs from there, even though the circle was really large and impressive, but the sign leading up to the stones instead :)