From a hilltop bristling with bracken, a scattering of islands and islets lay before us; droplets of green in a sheet of still water. The horizon was reminiscent of a coastal archipelago. Yet, as the wisps of distant rain drifting along the hillside reminded us, we were not in the tropics but in Scotland. These islands belonged to a freshwater loch that wound between us and a neighbouring mountain range. Halfway up Beinn Dubh, and Loch Lomond had revealed its secrets. The loch contains more than 20 islands and we could spot many of them. One, we later learnt, is home to white deer, while another has its own nudist colony (in Scotland!).
I knew the ‘bonnie
