Driving back on our last day through the craggy mountains and endless lowlands of the Trossachs National Park, we all marveled at the frosted countryside surrounding us -- wild glens, dark lochs and sweeping forests dotted only by the occasional cow.
Dazzling gorse, the colour of buttercups, twinkles beside shallow aquamarine coastal waters and the deep, dark, peaty lochs.
This is a work, as usual, of glittering Sparkian ice, whose thinly frozen surface tempts you to jump up and down jovially above something deeper and darker than Loch Ness.
His ancestors on his mother's side of the family came from Torridon, an area of towering mountains and dark sea lochs in Wester Ross.
The first seven-mile stretch skirts the dark waters of Loch Hourn, rising and falling over a series of cliffs that ascend above the fjord.
Almost two miles of spotless white sand, backed by rolling dunes and a dark and brooding loch with, on either side, finely chiselled rocky headlands that funnel the crashing surf: this is Sandwood Bay.
Unless you're a fan of dark, murky water, Loch Ness doesn't have all that much underwater scenery to offer.
These include Loch Goil, Loch Long, Gare Loch, Loch Fyne and the estuary of the River Clyde.
Just before dark, I swam in the loch.
Loch stood in the dark for a while and listened.
