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There's snow on the hills and menacing clouds. ‘It's a thin wind still,’ says Donny, who looks after the Guisachan cottages for Donald Fraser. Thin, meaning sharp, keen, biting.

The bare birch woods are red against the hillsides.

In Tomich, asking directions at the inn, I see a sprightly, elderly man walking his dog down the road. ‘Albert Dormer,’ says my informant. ‘He used to be bridge correspondent for The Times.’ When he lived in Tomich? ‘No, that was before.’

What chance brought him here to live?