The sky is a huge brilliant blue, the sea a magnificent reflection. The view I’m drinking in as blue as blue can be.

“Blue enough?” The universe whispers. “Won’t this do?”

And twirls off into the sky, leaving me to admire the clouds of her trail, and an utterly wonderful blue.

Must turn back eastward: home.

Till I stop and think: no.

This is home. This is where I belong. This is where my heart needs to be, and where my spirit flies.

I’ll leave part of myself here. (I always have done – maybe that’s why I feel lost when I’m gone.) I’ll go back to work and pack and plan and get ready. It’s a three month period of work.

But before you know it I’ll be back. Where I should be. Home.

The sun’s shining on the boat and when I arrive at Hunters Quay the noise is deafening: birds singing, chirping, tweeting, chirruping, laughing. They are celebrating my being there. I cannot believe I will wake up each morning and hear their joyful celebration.

The air is balmy: soft, sweet, deliciously May time. It can only be a sunny May day in the west Highlands.

I’m nervous about the arrangements for the walk, it suddenly seems far-fetched to find the car park, and hail the bus, and the bus to arrive at the right time and take me to the right place, but I let go and trust. And the bus comes.

The walk starts at Benmore Gardens: teeming with visitors and rhododendrons ready to burst into bloom. It’s an 8 mile walk to the top of Loch Eck, along its west side, all the way from one end of the Loch to the other. The sun shines all the way.

And it’s a photo walk too, taking pictures as I go and this stopping, and noticing, and taking of pictures, oh it takes me so long to keep stopping and taking and walking and stopping. It adds a good hour to a four hour walk.

But it’s worth it. I find hidden treasures. Tiny red thistles, just waiting to be admired. Outrageous gorse bushes, firing up yellow to the heavens. Purple rhododendrons, blooming and in bud. Tiny hedgerow flowers: weeds really, that you’d normally walk past without a glance. But look what happens when you stop, bend down, pay attention, whisper “thank you”.

Look how much beauty you find.

Towards the end of the walk I lie down in the grasses. Oh yes, it’s partly because I’m tired and it’s hot, but it’s mainly because it’s the best way I know to get up close and personal with the Highlands. To lie down on the warm, rough ground, and look out through the moorland grasses. Breathe in her scents. Watch through that grassy frame. Let the landscape move, softly, as the grasses bend in the wind.

It’s a feeling of perfect contentment. Of being at peace, at ease, of being in precisely the right place at precisely the right moment in time.

And giving thanks.

In the wood, the wind flies through the trees, spooking me with its whispers. The golden remains of autumn lie on the path, even though we’re nearing spring. Gorse bushes are walloped by the wind and the rain, bright petals strewn like confetti in the path.

At the break in the path, an old green bench sits waiting.

It marks a break in the landscape. The sky opens up. The woods stops its whispering. Here the gorse bushes stand strong. The sea shimmers silver ahead.

The path runs on to the cairn at Torrylinn.

I stop to soak up the history. It’s only later I notice the colour of the stones, the perfect ending to my yellow-seeking walk.

Stained deep with yellow lichen.

I can’t decide what to look for but a burst of purple heather at the top of the church lane makes the decision for me. And so I watch for purple as I walk.

You wouldn’t be surprised at the flowers and plants I found on my way: crocuses, tiny hedgreow blooms, dark purple leaves on the ground, even the woody stalks of the brambles have gone purple, as if the juice of the last berries has been sucked into them, waiting to paint the next batch of berries when the autumn comes back around.

And I guess you wouldn’t be surprised at the pebbles and rocks on the shore, the inner shine of an oyster shell, the near brown shades of the sea-weed, all adding to my collection.

It was the rubbish that perplexed me the most – dairy milk chocolate, a blackcurrant Locket, a calypso bar from the summer, even the print on thrown away papers was running purple in the rain. A circle of plastic washed up on the shore. An old office chair in someone’s garden – mainly white with a bright purple cushion. As if it had been put there, waiting for me.

On the way back from Kings Cross my eye was caught by a fragment of material in the muddy ground. A fragment of something bigger, a scarf maybe, or the lining of a glove, embedded deep into the earth, only an inch of colour showing: deep, dark purple.

Later in the day I walk out again. I’m looking for different things now.

As if.

Purple leaves, stones and flowers are thrown into view. Look at me, they say. We’re here too.

I walk down to the shore at Fallen Rocks and it’s all I can do not to laugh.

The rocks and stones are a thousand shades of purple, as if a god has taken the colour and splintered it into a thousand million variations all lying here at the beach to the north of Sannox.

It starts to rain and I can’t help myself, I gather up handfuls of pebbles, tiny stones and larger rocks, filling my pockets with the fruits of my day, bringing home bundles of purple.