Assault by midges is the price you pay for this shimmering landscape

Abriachan, Highlands In places, the canopy of thistle, ling, scabious and soft rush was sunk in a near-weightless empire of silk

Aside from the slurry of S-sounds tipped out by a roadside burn, there was nothing at this spot but the early morning hush of the moor. Yet the silence seemed only to emphasise all the internal noise generated in me by an assault from midges. They started as a loose-meshed veil about my hands and face but soon thickened into a maddening private halo.

They particularly wanted my wrists - I have 23 bites there as I type - and I could invert my binoculars to watch the 2mm beasts, with their pin-thin heads and barred bodies, at their work. How can something so easily turned to a smudge on a notebook page puncture human skin?