Brambles and Forest Bathing

It has been another rainy day in Ullapool so we decided to go for a walk in Lael Forest, reasoning that the trees would protect us from the wind and the rain. As it turned out, through good luck rather than good judgement, we managed to choose the driest couple of hours of the day for our walk. I quickly became overheated and soon divested myself of my waterproof trousers and jacket and stuffed them into my backpack. We climbed a short but steep set of steps to the forestry commission road, and before turning down to the forest paths, James suggested a short diversion to explore a higher area. Experience should have made me wiser, but I followed him like a little lamb and soon found myself edging along a path above a steep precipice, wading through bracken that was up to my waist, and creeping warily beneath a fallen tree that was only just being held up by another tree, against which it was making alarming creaking sounds. However there were compensations. James picked lots of brambles for me, and they were absolutely delicious - a blend of tart and sweet. We ate handfuls of them as we made our way back down to the paths which wind through the forest. Lovely.
I read somewhere recently that walking through a forest, spending calm and quiet time under the canopy of trees, is a form of nature therapy known as “forest bathing.” It apparently originated in Japan in the 1980s and is called shinrin yoku. However I would contend (and my sister Jennifer will concur) that my Mum and Dad actually invented it in the 1970s when we used to wander along paths through the forest in the Trossachs, often completely lost!