Category: Photography Trips

 In 2014 I escaped to Scotland again — another seven-hundred-mile drive in my old van, heading north for a week off work. I’d been doing an almost four-hour daily commute into London, and all I wanted was the opposite of that life: solitude, quiet, and the familiar comfort of Harris. 

I drove until I reached Glen Etive and stopped for the night, exhausted. A deep sleep, then back on the road at first light. Five more hours through the Highlands, across Skye, and on to the ferry at Uig. The crossing was calm. I ate haddock and chips, drank coffee on deck, and watched as the ferry slid into Tarbert. It was late afternoon but still light enough to feel like the day had something left to offer. 

I stopped to see a friend in the village, caught up on local news, and gratefully accepted still-warm cakes she’d made that afternoon. She invited me to breakfast the next morning, and then I slipped away into the Harris night to find somewhere to sleep. 

I parked on an exposed rise between two bays, looking across the water to the dark outline of Taransay. I remember putting on Dark Side of the Moon, which for me always fits a Hebridean night — especially with an Aberlour or two. The island was silent except for the wind and the occasional sigh of the tide. 

At the time I’d been getting more into night photography, capturing star-filled skies on clear evenings. So I set up the tripod and tried to compose something in what little light there was; it was a moonless night, so shapes and horizons were barely there. 

While I was working, I noticed a faint pulsing in the western sky — something flashing or breathing. My first thought, embarrassingly, was that it might be a distant car with its hazard lights on. Harris does that to you: simplicity becomes plausible. 

I took a photograph anyway — a twenty-second exposure — and checked the screen. 

There it was. 

Aurora borealis. 

Right there on Harris. 

My camera had seen far more than my eyes could. To me the sky had looked almost empty, a quiet darkness with a vague shimmer. But the photograph revealed greens and subtle shapes rolling above Taransay, something living and moving that I hadn’t recognised at all in real time. 

It was the first time I’d ever seen the Northern Lights. 

Even now, I can remember the stillness of that moment, standing there alone on a rise between two empty bays, listening to Pink Floyd and staring at a sky I thought I understood. 

I slept well that night. 

For years I carried a photograph in my head. 

I knew the composition. 

I knew the feeling. 

But I was stuck in an office in London, waiting for the chance to leave, to get north, to stand in the wind again. 

When the moment finally came, I packed the van and drove seven hundred miles in one long push. 

I slept in Glen Etive, woke early, and kept going — through the Highlands, across Skye, and on to the ferry at Uig. 

The familiar rhythm of that journey always feels like a return to something, even before you arrive. 

On Harris, I dropped in on a friend for coffee and pancakes, then carried on to Scarista — a beach I never tire of. 

The wind was howling in off the Atlantic. Big, turquoise rollers crashed onto the golden sand, each one throwing spray far downwind. 

I sank into the sand and watched for a while. It felt good just to sit there after so many months of waiting. 

I already knew the photograph I wanted to make. I’d seen it in my head often enough. 

So I set up the tripod, chose the lens that would give me the framing I’d imagined, and took a few test frames. 

The light was soft and diffuse; there was no need for filters. The composition fell into place easily — but the day had something else in store. 

A dark shape moved in the surf. At first I couldn’t work out what it was. 

It rose with the next wave, hanging for a moment in a cross-shaped silhouette against the glassy blue water. 

Then the wave collapsed and a seal surfaced, watching me. 

I walked a few metres down the beach. The seal followed, keeping pace in the water, head bobbing just above the surface. 

I walked back the other way and it followed again. 

So I ran — and it followed faster, the two of us tracing parallel lines along that wide shore. 

We kept this up for a few minutes until, eventually, it disappeared beneath the waves. 

It was a small, magical encounter — a vast beach, turquoise rollers thumping the sand, a playful seal shadowing my steps, and the photograph I’d carried for so long finally made. 

The wind was blowing hard enough to tear the tops off the waves. 

When I turned to leave, I noticed a line of cows grazing the machair above the dunes, unbothered by the weather, 

moving slowly through the grass as if this kind of day were the most ordinary thing in the world. 

It felt like a fitting reminder: the photograph is the excuse, the anchor — but the day itself is what stays with you.