I’M STANDING ON THE EASTERN EDGE OF Scotland, looking out over the rugged North Sea coastline. The next landfall, more than 600km in the distance, is Denmark. It’s particularly cold today, autumn slowly turning to winter, the morning sun hanging low over the choppy, cresting waves, my breath clouding in the air.
This is Tentsmuir Forest, at the very north-eastern tip of Fife, on the coast between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. I can see the spires of St Andrews Cathedral to my right and hear the muffled crack of military gunfire to my left, at the Barry Buddon firing range over the wide mouth of the River Tay.
To run here, through the trees or along the beaches, is to feel immersed in something reassuringly solid; but this forest is barely a hundred…
