Longing ...

The longing I refer to is really twofold, and today I realised a part of what I've been wanting to do for such a long time: have a camera with a sufficiently good zoom to take a photo of Arran's snow-clad mountains from the Ardyne shore of Cowal. We walk there so often - though less often than we used to, because traffic on the road has increased and we have to choose our time - and I look at the hills and know that any photo taken with my phone will fail to capture what I see. 

But my new camera - actually a year old, but I'm still learning - has a powerful enough zoom to take this photo. Disappointingly, the weather had taken a turn for the less brilliant by the time we got out, but I'm pleased with this shot of the peaks beyond Rothesay and pleased that I made the effort to carry a camera rather than the phone in my pocket.

The other longing is much more powerful and of much longer standing: I cannot see these hills without longing to be among them. I've been like this for at least 65 years, since the day my father took me up Goatfell when I was seven. I've climbed its 2,800' well over 20 times, from all sides - that's its bulk on the left of the photo. The other massif is a jumble of the peaks on the west side of the Glen Rosa-Glen Sannox divide, and I've climbed several of them too. 

I don't know if I'll ever fulfil my desire to walk among them when they are covered in snow - I've given up any thought of climbing them when they're like that - but I can't bear to think I'd not have another go ... and another ... and another ...

My extra photo is of the Coruisk (the decent ferry they let us have sometimes in winter) emerging from the early morning mist on her way across to Dunoon.