I have my husband to thank for introducing me to wild camping. Our first trip together, twenty-five years ago, was to somewhere in the highlands of Scotland. Details are hazy but I remember the novelty of carrying a rucksack with a Karrimat sausage attached to its exterior, the teamwork of setting up the tent, and the voluptuous pleasure of resting tired, aching muscles in a cotton-lined sleeping bag (I have it still, now worn and threadbare, but loved all the more). I also r

It’s a colour I’ve been trying to capture all my adult life. I want to hold it in my hand, bathe in it, live forever near it. It’s a colour that soothes like silk, yet energises the spirit; it’s a clean, vibrant, joyous colour. It’s the colour of gems, of Andean opal, and the flecked Peruvian turquoise pendant I bought years ago in Huaraz, and the rough azurite stone I spotted in the Johannesburg airport. It’s the colour of ancient Roman glass beads that have been buried for