Where is it?
Glen Coe in the Highlands.
Why do you go there?
I get a thrill every time I approach Glen Coe. There’s something magical about how the landscape changes driving north from my home in Fife, passing through the wildness of Rannoch Moor and then on to the iconic, hulking Buachaille Etive Mor.
My debut novel, Fray, is inspired by this wild, otherworldly landscape, which can be both beautiful and truly threatening. I love running there.
How often do you go?
Not as often as I’d like, as there is so much to explore. Every trip is different.
How did you discover it?
When I was young, we used to take family holidays on the Western Isles, so back then I mainly knew the grandeur of the west coast as a route to Skye and the ferry to Stornoway. I rediscovered it on a holiday as an adult, picked by my in-laws as a remote place for a family getaway. They made a very good choice.
What’s your favourite memory?
I had the idea for my novel Fray while running on a dark, stormy October day, setting off from Kinlochleven, past the Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall and up the steep slopes. The weather had already started grey but turned really bad once I had climbed to about 500 metres.
I was forced to abandon my plans of reaching a Munro summit and turned back. Then, on the run down, I passed the disused and eerie Mamore Lodge Hotel. I had an exhilarating feeling of being so small against the mountains and the force of the weather, but totally alive.
That day I wrote the first page of my book, trying to put into words the emotion and intensity of that storm set against such a remarkable landscape.
Who do you take?
I enjoy taking it all in alone, at my own pace.
What do you take?
Spare trainers and a change of clothes. I once waded into Loch Leven to get a better angle for a photograph, only to realise too late that I’d left all my dry kit at home. It was a long, wet drive home.
What do you leave behind?
Tension and anxiety, as I always return home both happy and exhausted.
Sum it up in five words.
Beautiful. Brutal. Calming. Stirring. Threatening.
What other travel spot is on your wish list?
I’d love to go back to Orkney, where I lived briefly when I was young. They are amazing islands and I have very special childhood memories of Rackwick Bay, near to the Old Man of Hoy sea stack.
Fray by Chris Carse Wilson (HarperCollins, £14.99), out now. The author is speaking at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow, as part of Aye Write’s Ones to Watch, on May 27 (£6). Visit glasgowlife.org.uk
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