Going off radar can offer the truest rewards - Alison Campsie
I'm just back from holiday to Assynt, the first time away in quite some time, and the last thing I felt like doing was letting others know my every move.
There was a new kind of freedom to be had in heading out into the mountains with a map, a compass and quickly draining 22 per cent charge in my pocket.
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Hide AdAs I walked the two hours to the foot of the hill, I shut the little bleeder off after taking one image of the magnificent peak of Suilven as it transcended the landscape around me.
I tuned into the watery wilderness, the hundreds of millions of years of geology and felt the joy of a warm, drizzly Highland midsummer morning seep in.
The only person I really wanted to share this experience with was myself.
After escalating the self doubt that rose within as I approached the foot of this magnificent peak, I started to head up through the gully. It was a hard graft, walked with careful steps of intent.
On reaching the top and the views hit from all angles, I knew that all roads, the lumps and the bumps of the past while, had led me here. There was nowhere else I was meant to be at that moment and a certain euphoria flooded in.
This was a tick in time that I did want to capture. I turned on my phone, took a selfie - and my phone died in my hand. No matter.
Later, I had a little more charge and took two more pictures of a bay close to Achmelvich where I sat and ate a cheese pie and drank a mug of tea as the sun of the solstice started to fall away.
Before I headed off on holiday, and amid the deep concerns surrounding the rush of visitors to these fragile, beautiful places, I thought about how to tread as lightly as I could. Not hashtagging the life out of my trip seemed to be something I could do to limit my trace.
Days later, I posted four images of my holiday to a closed down instagram account for friends and left the location tags off. Going a little off radar can offer the greatest, truest rewards.