Where is it?

The Birks of Aberfeldy. An hour’s walk around a wooded gorge enclosing the cascading Moness Burn. Famous for inspiring Robert Burns.

Why do you go there?

Much of my writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, springs from time spent outdoors. Walking wakes the senses, imagination and curiosity.

The Birks gateway is less than one minute from my home. Despite living here for nearly 28 years, the step from town tarmac into a woodland arcadia still enchants – sudden birdsong echoing in the high canopy and the burn gushing.

A circuit of the path will generate words or simply transform my mood as woodpeckers hammer or red squirrels peer at me from above, chattering insults.

Wild garlic lays its green-scented carpet in the early spring, trees drip in summer, the autumn blazes and moss is wrist-deep and luminous when winter light filters in. One year the “centrepiece” waterfall froze so hard that a climber front-pointed up it.

How often do you go?

Daily, weekly, whenever: a beating of the bounds.

How did you discover it?

I found the path one lunch hour about a week after moving here for a job, climbed quickly through beech, hazel, birch and onto an airy, spray-soaked bridge with the brink of the waterfall thundering directly under me.

What’s your favourite memory?

Last year an eight-year-old Ukrainian boy was living with me. One lovely May evening we took the low, dank, misleadingly level path. He ran eagerly alongside the gushing burn until we began climbing steeply up steps and zigzags.

Encouraged at first by the spectacle of foaming cascades, he was soon groaning and clinging to a handrail in “am-dram” collapse. Somehow, we staggered on upwards until a gap in foliage revealed a column of plummeting white water.

Soon afterwards, we stood in spray, silenced on the bridge above it. Staying high, we walked out of the woods along a sun-dappled path where he took my hand – an act of trust prompted by the bigheartedness of the place.

The Tay Valley opened and Schiehallion spired up ahead. I told him that one day he’d climb that too.

Who do you take?

Every visitor. I’ve also run writing workshops here, returning adults to their childhood selves with noses in leaf litter and hands grating on tree bark – conjuring landscape into words.

What do you take?

Always a notebook, sometimes a tea flask. Then I’ll pause somewhere – listen, take in the scents and the season, or single out a particular tree for discourse (good for human humility).

What do you leave behind?

Once, on World Book Day, I left a package of my own books to be claimed by a random walker.

Sum it up in five words.

Shady. Sylvan. Humid. Gushing. Home.

What other travel spot is on your list?

I sometimes long for the sea and particularly the rugged west coast. A five-day stroll with a backpack through Assynt or the Applecross area would do fine, thanks.

Writing Landscape by Linda Cracknell, is published by Saraband, £8.99, out now