The Findhorn rises in the Monadhliath Mountains, which lie in the Scottish Highlands between Loch Ness and the Cairngorms. Over the course of its sixty-or-so miles, it changes hugely in character, from broad gravel-bedded salmon waters to turbulent, treacherous whirlpools, running finally through a roaring tidal channel to the Moray Firth and the sea beyond.
Helen begins her journey in a canoe, along with Jamie Whittle, who, having grown up on the Findhorn's banks, decided to take a journey upstream on foot, paddling back down, to see for himself the river in all its variety. He's written an account of his feelings for the Findhorn, and shares with Helen his conviction that this is truly 'wild country'.
The roaring of the stags in this, their rutting season, is one of the Highlands' most characteristic Autumn sounds, and Rosemary Dempster, wife of a keeper on the Coignafearn Estate, takes Helen onto the river banks at night to hear them in full cry. For her husband, the roaring of the stag is a normal sign of the changing season, but for Rosemary, who did not grow up by the Findhorn, it's still an extraordinary and eerie sound. The has more information on this phenomenon.
Lewis Rose was born and grew up by the Findhorn and knows the dangers of the river when it's in full spate. Heavy rain in the mountains can send peaty walls of water along normally peaceful stretches, and for those who don't know the river,can become a treacherous pastime. His mother Mary, who has lived in her cottage by the Findhorn since the late 1940s and gave up fishing in her eighties, recalls her local fame as a great fisherwoman - her heaviest salmon was 21 lbs - and why a pool by her house has been named in her honour.
Passing by the gorge at Randolph's Leap with Jamie, stopping to look at the waters boiling 'like caramel on a stove', Helen ends her journey atΜύ itself, a village which has moved with the times. Originally built on the shore across the bay from its present site, tremendous influxes of sand and water over the centuries forced the villagers to relocate and start again. Helen meets Tim Negus, a local man who explains the present (and ever-changing) lie of the land and Ian Suttie, an ornothologist, for whom the sound of the pink footed geese coming to roost by the bay is a sure sign that Autumn has come.
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