10 songs that bring back memories of my travels: Emma John's playlist

The Highlands, Texas, India and the Chilterns are among places that have inspired our writer – herself a bluegrass fiddler – through music

I first met the trio behind this track in a hotel on the banks of Loch Lomond. They were recording for a TV series, and the vast window behind them looked out across the water’s placid surface to hills that seemed to constantly change colour, from grey to green to purple to blue. The wistful way this track begins – halfway between melancholy and joy – captures the wild beauty of theScottish countryside for me, before it breaks into an upbeat jig, like the sun coming out. It whisks me back to heather-strewn glens and lowering munros, to the serenity of inland waters and the weathered beauty of the coast, and in my mind I can picture myself in the Highlands, driving through scenes of unfathomable splendour towards a cosy pub, and a shindig.