I like to think of myself as a Scottish laird (actually, I am only an Italian baron), but my modest demesne is a hill farm 1,100ft up a glen in Highland Perthshire. We bought our home in 1998: to locals, we are still incomers. We look out across the great sweep of the Vale of Atholl; behind our ‘mansion’ towers Beinn a’ Ghlo with its 19 secret corries (once the haunt of witches) and resplendent to the south-west is another Munro, Schiehallion — Gaelic for ‘the fairy hill of the Caledonians’. In the 10th century, M’Intosh of ‘Tereynie’ held court in the River Tilt nearby — he liked to string up the odd clansman pour encourager les autres.
Most of the panoramic vista is part of the huge Atholl estates; we can just see the distant tip of Blair Castle’s flagstaff below us. Our house was built a century ago for the then Duke’s sister and her husband (like us, they were David and Helen), and the view is a mixture of the wild and the managed — moor, park and birkwoods, with no stapled-in windfarms. This is arguably God’s Own County; they say Pontius Pilate was born at Fortingall.
With a trout loch a mere cast away, David Profumo pines for little in his Highland fastness.
When we moved beyond the ‘Tartan Curtain’, there were jokes about needing a Scottish passport and misgivings about rain. Actually, it’s the unrelenting winter wind that gets to you and we do need our own snowplough. I admit that, slogging up our steep brae through the springtime sleet, I sometimes pine for the pavements of Mayfair, but, if it’s shopping you miss, our local emporium is House of Bruar.
This landscape is breathtaking. Behind us rises unkempt moorland with ling heather and bosses of rubicund moss; in season there’s a soundtrack of cuckoo, lapwing and that bubble-stream song of curlews. Red and roe deer have historically abounded. When Mary, Queen of Scots visited Blair in 1564, the day’s deer drive involved a team of 2,000 beaters and the bag (to bow and hounds) was 360 slain, plus five wolves. Nae rewilders back then.
The Tilt is a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the mighty Tay; one fluky morning, I landed three salmon from the same pool. We are within striking distance of numerous fishing hotspots, as our nearest, low-key township (Pitlochry) is reckoned to be the topographical centre of Scotland, but I don’t have to go far to cast a line: outside my library window is a bonny little trout loch, as the local osprey well knows.
The London Sleeper train handily stops at the old ducal station in Blair Atholl, so we can soon reach the Soft South if the mood takes us. ‘Whatever do you do up there?’ enquire certain English infidels. As Louis Armstrong replied, when asked to explain jazz: ‘Lady, if ya gotta ask, ya’ll never know!’
Local highlight
Blair Castle and the Bruar Falls
Local lowlight
February
Local secret
Rami’s Pitlochry Bakery
David Profumo is Country Life's fishing correspondent. His memoir ‘The Lightning Thread’ is out in paperback (Scribner UK, £9.99)
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