A slow Highlands adventure: new laid-back holidays to benefit people and planet

A trip in the Scottish Highlands shows how some tour operators are now trying to ensure local people benefit from visitors, rather than being bypassed

“We can take the high ground and possibly avoid the bog and stream or take the easier low ground and probably end up in both,” our mountain guide Anna Danby explains as we contemplate our route along the Abhainn Rath – a stream that trickles beneath the Ben Nevis range. Rain and sun come and go leaving a shifting patchwork of colours on the valley floor below.

We opt for the higher ground, picking our way along the contours and admiring six roe deer silently surveying us from a ridge 20 metres away. Once we’re on the valley floor, petrified tree trunks, the bog-preserved remains of a forest that filled this landscape 7,000 years ago, jut out from rusty-red and peat-black gullies. Baby frogs leap in all directions. Away from the main hiking paths, there’s no one else in sight.