The inspiring women skiing and surfing their way through life in Scotland

The worlds of outdoor pursuits in general and extreme sports in particular are often criticised for being too male, so it was a pleasant surprise, this week, to look back on the last 12 months of the Final Words column and realise that, for once (probably for the first time in ten years, in fact) the majority of the interviewees have been women.

While covering Scottish freeride ski and snowboard events over the years, I’ve become a big fan of Glencoe skier Katie Small, who has dominated the women’s ski division of the Scottish Freedom Series since it began, winning it for three years in a row, so it was a treat to finally do a proper interview with her in February. What’s the secret to her fearsome record on the Scottish freeride circuit, I wondered: covert scoping of the terrain ahead of contests? A state of the art exercise regime? Nope, none of the above. According to Small, the thing that really gives her the edge over her nearest competitors on Scotland’s steepest, gnarliest mountainsides is being “a bit better at staying on my feet.” Aspiring freeride competitors, please take note.

In April, artist Laura Maynard called on a crackly line from the Isle of Lewis to discuss the island’s vibrant surf scene, and in particular her Wave Migration project – a series of 15 stunning paintings of local waveriders, each one pictured beside his or her favourite surf break. As the title suggests, many of the featured surfers had moved to the island from elsewhere in order to take advantage of its wave-rich coastline. “Most of my friends are people who have moved to the island,” said Maynard, who grew up on Lewis, “and I love that injection of people with new ideas from different places, and the community that it’s made.”

Still on the life aquatic, in May I tracked down 19-year-old Scottish surfing champion Iona Mclachlan, who had just caused jaws to drop from Melvich to Machrihanish by beating two previous holders of the title – Shoana Blackadder and Phoebe Strachan – at the Scottish Nationals in Thurso. Having spent a year travelling the world (and surfing some of its best waves) with her partner Finn Macdonald, the pair had just set up their own surf school, North Coast Watersports, based in Thurso.

“I think up here we really need some outdoor activities for tourists,” she said, “because it’s all really kicking off with [driving route] the North Coast 500. It will be good to have something for locals as well. Even people who have lived here their whole lives can sometimes have no idea there’s any surf scene, or that there are waves up here that are good to surf.”

Given that she is writer-in-residence for the Cairngorms National Park, an interview with Merryn Glover would ideally have taken place on the summit of Ben Macdui or on the banks of the River Spey. Due to time constraints, however, when I met up with her in June, it was in a cafe in Edinburgh’s New Town. Still, if good writing has the power to transport then, reading over some of her “Cairngorms Lyrics,” we might as well have been in the mountains. The idea of the new poetic form she’s invented is that anyone can have a go, and Glover has been holding workshops at locations throughout the national park encouraging people of all ages to do just that. The rules are as follows: 1) a Cairngorms Lyric must have 15 words (not syllables, as it’s easier for kids to count words); 2) it has to include an element of nature somewhere in the park; and 3) it needs to include one word of nonenglish origin.

“The one word can be in any language,” Glover explained, “and we’re encouraging people to write the whole poem in their own language if they want to, partly just to push back against the dominance of English and partly to celebrate the linguistic heritage of the area and also the contemporary linguistic diversity.” An anthology of writing produced as part of Glover’s residency, Shared Stories – A Year in the Cairngorms

– is available now from www. cairngormstrust.org.uk. Cairngorms Lyrics produced in workshops in Spanish, Gaelic and Doric sit alongside writing by well-kent names like Linda Cracknell and Alec Finlay.

And finally, no round-up of the intrepid outdoorswomen of 2019 would be complete without a mention of Helen Rennie, aka Hilly, who, in October, completed a remarkable 120 consecutive months of skiing on Scottish snow. When we spoke in November, she summed up her approach to skiing, and to life in general, as follows: “I’m grateful for each day and do the best I can with each day and enjoy it.” n

“Even people who have lived here their whole lives can have no idea there’s any surf scene”