‘ Growing up in Florida, my redneck family loved hunting and fishing’

My love affair with the Highlands started when I was a cook for a summer at a hostel in Glenmore, near Aviemore. I needed some quiet to work because I was over from the US on a visa which expired that September, so my PhD absolutely had to be submitted by then. Back in Sheffield I just wasn’t getting any work done, so I took myself off to the Cairngorms because it was the most remote place I could think of. My only other previous trip to Scotland had been to Dundee.

Living in Glenmore made me realise what Scotland has to offer. I could be cooking breakfast at the hostel, writing at lunch time and then out in the mountains for a few hours every evening. My husband and I got our fix of the mountains by coming up to Lochaber every holiday for several years, but somehow it was never enough. One day, sitting in our house in Bristol, I’d just finished a research contract and we’d always said we’d move to Scotland one day, so we decided to make one day this day. We decided to move to the mountains permanently, found a house to rent on the internet and moved within days. My husband initially worked in a shop in Fort William high street, but now works in the fire service, while I write full-time.

We chose Lochaber because we’d done a lot of kayaking here so knew it well. My husband really likes ice climbing and walking, but I’m a fair weather person who’s into boats and kayaking. My husband drags me out skiing and makes me walk up mountains, while I get him into boats; it’s great that we’re both trying new things.

Lochaber is the best of both worlds – you get the mountains and the sea, so you can do both in the same day if you really want to. If you love the great outdoors it’s hard to beat. We moved out here for the solitude. Some days you just want to be alone with your thoughts.

At Glenmore, I inadvertently bagged a lot of Munros just because they were on my doorstep, but now I can pick the perfect day. Munro baggers from England or the Central Belt have their three days’ holiday and if they coincide with the worst weather in fifty years then they have no choice but to psych themselves up to go out in it. I can look out the window and think, ‘I’ll do it another time’. As a writer, I work hard on the horrible days, which makes me feel extremely virtuous and means that I’m free to enjoy the good days without feeling too guilty.

When we do walk, my favourite mountains would be Creag Meagaidh (the Munro known locally as ‘ Meggie’) and Sgurr Dhòmhnuill, which is not a Munro, which means you get it to yourself. It has spectacular views that show where the lochs and roads come together – you can also see the small isles and, on a very clear day, you can see the outer isles from the peak.

I like walking but in the winter we spend most of our time skiing in the Nevis Range – I get very used to the gondola and chairlifts carrying me around the mountain! Plenty of people ski well into their late years and I like to think I’ll still be going strong in my eighties. Skiing is one of those sports you can do into your later years, like shooting, stalking and fishing, which are really popular in Lochaber. They are very different to the sort of shooting and fishing I grew up with in Florida where my redneck family – like all rednecks

Right: On the piste at the Nevis Range, where the author spends much of her winter months.

– love hunting, shooting, fishing. Over here a completely different type of person shoots and fishes; people here seem impressed that I know how to bait a hook and gut a fish. Where I grew up hunting was just a source of cheap food. The whole tweed thing came as a real surprise.

We recently did a three-day kayaking journey that I’d wanted to do for ages, and every minute was a magical experience. We parked the car at Glenfinnan and paddled down Loch Shiel, then down the river Shiel to Eilean Shona before finishing at the fantastic Glenuig Inn, which is owned by sea kayakers. We then picked up the train to get us back to the car, before collecting the kayaks and going home.

I love kayaking along that stunning shoreline, but what I really enjoy is arriving at a remote camping spot and knowing you’re not going to see anyone else. I love the ritual of setting up the tent, building the fire, cooking dinner and eating it with one of those incredible West Coast sunsets as the backdrop, before having a dram and then sleeping the sleep of the happy and exhausted.

So much of Lochaber has these hidden, perfect little beaches. My favourite has amazing views out to the Small Isles, but unless you approach from the sea you’d never know it was there. We’ve lived here for more than five years now and still find new places all the time. My husband got a map from a friend in the fire service, which showed a secret cave that isn’t even marked on the OS map, so we kayaked around to it and sure enough there it was. There were some chalk marks, so some bouldering people had been in climbing around on

the inside of the cave, but it was otherwise like our own little secret.

There’s an incredible array of wildlife in Lochaber, with deer everywhere, and golden eagles too. When we kayak, we see otters and seals, which follow you, sniffing the air and checking you out. I haven’t seen any basking sharks yet, which is a huge pity because I’m a massive fan of Tex Geddes’ book The Hebridean Sharker. I just loved his energy, where he came back from the war and didn’t know what to do so he set about using his commando training by setting up a basking shark processing plant on Soay with Gavin Maxwell. We landed on Soay and walked to the memorial to Tex and his wife Jean; we passed a gentleman standing outside a shack wearing worn-through tweeds and a jumper with the elbows long gone. He had big ginger hair, a big bald patch, and a big ginger beard, and turned out to be Tex Geddes’ son. He told us about how they used to fish illegally and how, if anybody was coming out to catch them, the local crofters or fishermen would hang a sheepskin to alert them. It was so brilliantly Whisky Galore.

The further you get away from Fort William, the more pressing the lack of jobs becomes. It’s a real issue because as soon as they leave school most of the kids are off to work in the Central Belt or England. When we moved to our village in Ardnamurchan, we soon had a queue of retirees asking whether my husband could help move some rocks around their garden or mow their lawn. I think we brought the average age of the village down by at least a decade.

We are very involved with our village community; it helps that I love to dance, love ceilidhs, and play the banjo embarrassingly badly. As long as you’re willing to throw yourself into local life people will give you the benefit of the doubt. I even joined our area’s agricultural society a couple of years ago as the secretary, although I knew nothing about sheep. I learnt to make all of the things you can enter in the local show, especially empire biscuits and clootie dumplings. I suggested a home brew category because we do a lot of home brewing and produce everything from wine and mead to beer. Mead is great, dead easy, and quite a lot of local people have hives in their back gardens.

We’re about a mile from the village pub and like to go there after events in the village, but going to the same pub night after night isn’t for me. I love gin and whisky – I’m an ambassador for the Wee Nip whisky festival in Inverness – so I’m happy sitting in my pyjamas in front of a roaring fire enjoying my home brew or a dram.

We have beautiful views from our house, but more often it’s the people and the animals that provide the real entertainment. We currently have two rams in our front field, and they are great to watch. I never knew they were so clever and such inventive escapees.

I visit Edinburgh and Glasgow when I need a fix of galleries or museums, but the restaurants here are pretty good. Kilcamb Lodge in Strontian is great; we went there for my mother-in-law’s birthday and were lucky to get in because the night before Kate Winslet had arrived by helicopter and took over the

‘Out kayaking, the seals follow you, sniffing the air and checking you out’

Above: On the Caledonian Canal, which joins Loch Linnhe at Fort William.

whole place. The venison at the Boathouse in Kingairloch and the fish at The Whitehouse in Lochaline are great, and if you like fish and chips the Loch Shiel Hotel in Acharacle is hard to beat. There are a surprising number of restaurants in the area – the Old Pines in Spean Bridge, the Lochleven Seafood Larder near Kinlochleven, Arisaig House and the Crannog in Fort William are all excellent – which is one upside of having a seasonal influx of tourists.

I love the food in Lochaber. I was a vegetarian until I moved here, but that wouldn’t work here – the heather doesn’t taste good and takes a long time to chew. I love home-made oatcakes, while the forester that uses our field gives the venison from half a deer as payment. My husband drove a dive boat for a while and he used to get tipped in scallops – happy days!

Having grown up in Florida, I’m a hot weather person. The weather here is a shocker – it proves how amazing it is to live in this part of the world that I’ll put up with it. There are many days where you just can’t go out; the worst was the dreadful winter of 2010, our first here, when we were snowed in for days at a time and all the pipes froze. We’re prepared for it now: our house is south facing, gets the light, has a good fire, good heating and good back-up because the power goes out a lot. There’s a huge sense of satisfaction when it’s the middle of winter and the power goes out but your fire is already going merrily and you just pull out the scrabble and the whisky, and that’s your evening’s entertainment sorted.

Back in the States, even from a young age, I was a big fan of bourbon, so appreciating