Walking Highland Perthshire. Ronald Turnbull

      Meall Garbh summit ridge, the Tarmachans (Route 12)

      For the Atholl highlander of 400 years ago there were two ways of treating any passing hillwalker. Arrive at teatime, and it would be a stool in front of the peat fire, eggs still warm from the midden, a glass of heather ale and a wee skirl on the pipes. That tradition continues in the main street of Pitlochry, perhaps the world capital of the nice cup of tea and slab of shortbread.

      But meet him on a winter night, in his filthy old kilt and a thieving chill in his eye – you’re about to lose all your livestock and maybe also your life.

      So if you think of Perthshire as little tea-shop towns like Crieff and Aberfeldy, think again. At the back of Blair Atholl you can walk over the tops for four or five days, and when your feet next touch tarmac you’re somewhere north of Aberdeen. In the wilds of Rannoch Moor, your only foothold is a bleached limb of pine, bog-preserved over tens of centuries. No longer ago than 1980, a Mr J C Donaldson discovered in an old guidebook an unlisted and unrecorded Munro. It was called Ben Feskineth. At 3530ft, this secret summit was by no means a marginal Munro. And where was it? Ben Feskineth lay undiscovered in deepest, peatiest Perthshire.

Jolly green giants

      In the event, Feskineth turned out to be a misspelling of Beinn Heasgarnich (now, amusingly, respelled again on the Explorer map as Sheasgarnaich). Heasgarnich’s high grassy sides are steep, but not unpleasantly so, and hold snow even in unpromising winters. Perthshire’s grassy, pebbly plateaux and rounded ridges are places to relax after the rigours of Scotland’s rocky north and west. But relaxation is relative, when Scottish hills are concerned. Perthshire’s mountains may be soft edged, and noted for their wild flowers. But easy they aren’t.