Shiehallion's Summit
Night falls over a wintry, snow covered expanse of mountain and loch from the frozen summit of Shiehallion.
Two of us walked to the top of the hill in time to catch the last of the short winter day's light and descend again in the dark. Scotland's hills aren't so big but sometimes they take on an arctic grandeur when the snow decides to fall and the temperature drops. It was bitingly cold up here on top of Shiehallion, a hill I like to think of as the centre of the universe. It was here in 1774 that contour lines on maps were first realised in part of a successful experiment led by the astronomer royal Nevil Maskelyne to measure the mass of the earth and, by extension, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, right here on top of Shiehallion, the Fairy Hill of the Caledonians.
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