There’s a cast iron swing arm that suspends the stew pot over the peat fire. Blackened, and rough to the touch. You can vary the height by removing a tapered pin and replacing it in the next hole.

Smoke and succulent steam. Firelight. The unique, highland smell of peat. The roof beams are low and blackened, and the door stands partly open to the wilds outside.

I’m mourning the real wildness that was once here. Wide tarmac intrudes on the water’s edge, and the hills are barren and sheep-scarred. When they said Highland Clearances, they weren’t joking. It’s shorn to the bone.

Still, the cloud-flecked light ripples across muscular hills, and rich browns of autumnal bracken blend with ageing purple heathers. The sun explodes from behind briefly broken cloud.

Why is it that we wish for cellophane-wrapped, ready-meal lives, when wildness and wet and muck and mud and misery still survive at the corners of our concrete creations?

I sip the steaming stew from the ladle’s bowl, and look out over dark water where no mythical monster is needed, where awe already resides.