We’d landed on St Kilda, the jagged half arc of islands 40 miles northwest of the Hebrides. The island custodian delivered a strict briefing for the visit. We had four hours. We could stay in Village Bay and wander amongst the historic ruins.

Alternatively there was Conachair, at 1,410ft the highest peak on the island from where the entire archipelago can be viewed if any of us were game enough for the steep climb. From the back came a loud, theatrical sigh. It was our nine-year-old son. “Oh no!” he said. “That’ll mean us then.”

Of course it meant us. With legs that function why would we not use them to take us to a unique place of savage splendour that cannot be reached by any other means than on foot?

Four hours later the young protester was back on the quayside, ablaze with the memory of panting up the relentless slope curved like a breaking wave, chased by the terrifying, dive-bombing great skuas, before arriving teetering on the rim of a 1,000ft sheer sea cliff.

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From that vantage point the famous stacks were revealed, shards of relentless, vertical rock driven straight up from the boiling sea, each encircled in personal sea mist like Saturn girded by rings, whilste above them thousands of nesting sea birds wheeled and plunged. We saw it all. No regrets. No complaints.

Yes, we walk when we can, because to walk is to indulge in the detail of landscape. It opposes the dynamism of fast travel, where glimpses of the world speed by, partially registered but never fully explored.

It’s an inescapable fact that those who walk in their neighbourhood know it more intimately than those who only transfer from car to house, and those who wander the hills and coast and forests, make acquaintance with their country on entirely different terms from those who admire it solely from a vehicle window or lay-by.

It is a privilege, not a chore, to be able to move freely and at a pace dictated by one’s own will and ability, over rural terrain that is protected by its inaccessibility, or through urban areas barnacled with details invisible to any but the pedestrian.

A gondola ride through Venice will delight the visitor, but the walker amongst the labyrinthine streets will not miss a single ornate doorknob, not the opportunity to place a hand on the warm, honey stone of some vine-wreathed, ancient wall.

To those who love to walk, the difficulty of singling out a favourite is a daunting task. I am, by inclination, a mountaineer, but admit to having been enthralled by less demanding wanderings in fascinating city streets or amidst manicured scenery expected to bore.

However, an unquenchable appetite for high and wild places dictates my passion. The draw of mountains is that intimacy must be earned, and in many cases earned over decades through a kaleidoscope of weather conditions.

The casual, fair-weather climber knows little of a mountain’s secret life, its barely survivable, blizzard-torn winter, which to those sufficiently experienced to withstand the brutality is the crack cocaine of walking. One needs more and more of it to satisfy both the curiosity to know what goes on up there in the storm clouds, and the cleansing experience of belittlement that comes from treading where the huddling ptarmigan trumps the human.

The breathtaking reward for anyone who has braved, say, the Torridon mountains in such view-less conditions, is to return on a flawless, clear spring day and drink in a panorama of azure ocean, scree-scored arêtes and bog-riven moorland that is unmatched anywhere in the world.

But there should be no hierarchical machismo in walking. One of our children is unable to walk at all, and it is by the necessity of planning family trips that are wheelchair accessible that we often find ourselves discovering delights and surprising adventures that would have otherwise be written off as tame.

Inverewe gardens in Wester Ross come to mind as one of the UK's many magical and easily traversable places, where one is required to set aside the ugly history of its Highland Clearance criminal founder, and concentrate instead on the psychedelic firework display of azalea blooms.

We often complain about our crowded island, and feel vindicated to travel abroad to search for wilderness and beauty. But it is all right here, waiting to be worshipped at close quarters.

I will never be done with the Highlands of Scotland, but I keenly anticipate kindling new pleasures by exploring more fully other parts of my country. The flinty picturesque Cotwolds, the fecund hedgerows of Devon and the spooky, rush-strewn flats of Norfolk are all on my list.

Until then, I feel compelled to use my dwindling physical vigour to take me to the high and the wild and the remote, and by living in Scotland I am spoiled for choice. We climbed the small peak of Binnein Shuas, 2,450ft above Loch Laggan last weekend. The summit boasted a view from Ben Nevis to the Cairngorms, while a duck on the loch 1,000ft below cut a long, quivering V in the still water. A sublime, unrepeatable treat. Walking’s reward.

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