FionaOutdoors

What is your skiing “type”? Are you happiest on long and flattering blue and red runs, whiling your days away enjoying the scenery and staying within your comfort zone? Are you a journey skier? The kind who spends delightfully long and frequently adventurous days discovering new ski runs and interconnecting valleys while making lots of [...]

Certainly, I reckon you’d agree, Scotland boasts a great deal of land that could be called “wild”. But how do you define “wild”? According to a new Scottish Natural Heritage project: “Wildness is a quality experienced by people when visiting places of a certain character.  Measuring wildness is inherently difficult, as people respond differently according to their experience [...]

We love walking routes in Scotland – and now we’re about to launch another. I don’t think we can have enough walking trails and so I’m happy to see a new one being built. This new path, named the Firth o’ Clyde Rotary Trail, will link the Mull of Galloway, on the Ayrshire coast, with Milngavie, East [...]

I have always avoided nights in bothies. What? FionaOutdors prefers B&B shocker? Well, no, I actually enjoy wild camping and I’d even prefer to sleep in the back of an estate car (this we have done several times to avoid the midge menace)  but bothies to me have always meant: Too Much Loud Male Snoring. [...]

Let’s get one thing straight first of all. If you’re imagining that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become a born-again sea kayaker you’d be wrong. Instead,  the Sea kayak DVD features one of Britain’s leading kayaking coaches, also called Gordon Brown. This is a review of the second volume in a series of extremely [...]

Bungee jumping would be enough of a thrill for most people, but now a Scottish outdoors company is launching a bungee jump at night. According to Highland Fling Bungee, the Hallowe’en  Night Bungee Jump event is the first of a its kind in Europe. On Saturday (Oct 29) dozens of adrenaline seekers will hurl themselves [...]

I have a massive fondness for rucksacks. There, I’ve outed myself as a Rucksack Lover. If I’m going to be absolutely truthful I own a wardrobe of rucksacks and not a single handbag. I have rucksacks for almost every occasion, from a short run to a multi-day hike, to a two-week holiday and back to [...]

It was wet. Very wet. The views were almost non-existent. But the day of walking was one of the best ever. Accompanied by 25 friends and family, the G-Force bagged the  final Munro of his first full Munro round. In contrast to the rather deflated Munro bagger a few weeks ago, his mood could not [...]

Stunning weather, superb views, a total transport cost of £8.50 and a fabulous day of solo cycling. Don’t you just love it when a day of adventure turns out to be utterly perfect? I had a whole day to myself and bizarrely(for Scotland in September) the weather forecast was predicting blue skies and sunshine. So [...]

To buy or not to buy ski and snowboarding equipment Last year’s snowboarding holiday saw me ditching my snowboard of 10 years (bought from top snowboarder Lesley McKenna after I was lucky enough to be given a few first lessons on the board) to try another, more modern board. But within 30 minutes I realised [...]