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Just before the hump bridge at Struy a green-bladed signpost, slightly awry, points the way to Glen Strathfarrar. It's easy to miss. A last-minute swerve may be required.

Half a mile into the glen a gate across the road bars the way. ‘Glen closed’ it says. How can you close a glen?

A note attached to the gatehouse doorway explains. Cars may not enter on Tuesdays (this is Tuesday) and Wednesday mornings in the season and they're strictly limited in number to 25 at one time. Out of season, never. You may walk in or bike if you like.

Years ago, I first came on this glen and was stopped at the gate. Out from the gatehouse came a large man who issued me with a ticket and told me somewhat grumpily, I thought, to be back by six or I'd be shut in. I read the instructions on the ticket:

Do not light fires, stoves or other appliances

Keep dogs on a lead and avoid disturbance of wildlife

Refrain from moving any plants or animals

Park with regard for others and take your litter home

Comply with any request from the warden, the proprietors or their agents, who will identify themselves to you

Five commandments, annotated so:

These conditions are necessary to protect the beauty of the glen and the scientific interest of the nature reserve. [It's no longer a nature reserve.] Note that no shooting, fishing or camping is allowed. Please drive with care. Maximum speed 30 mph.

I remember that day – the drenching rain, the sight of galleries of tall trees on the far bank of the river and no way to cross to them as the ford marked on the map looked dubious in the extreme.

I love these grand Caledonian pines, seemingly untouched by the ages. That day, I climbed through clumps of old pine trees clustered on either side of a heathery gully through which a burn called the Liatrie romps over a stony bed, crashing over falls in its downward race. The trees were fenced around to keep out deer which would eat the young shoots – protected so that a new flourish of young trees might succeed the old when they die. A cloud of small moths rose at my feet.

On my way back, I saw briars in bloom by the wayside, pink and white. By the waters of Loch Beannacharain, dark and mysterious, a solitary walker down from the misty tops was striding homeward in gaiters and waterproofs sopping wet. I offered him a lift but he preferred independence and marched on. I'd have appreciated his talk, dripping though he was.

My bed for the night was in the youth hostel at Cannich, now closed. It was crowded with a heterogeneous lot, mainly foreigners, Germans, French, Dutch, clashing pans in the kitchen. An Englishman and a couple of grizzled Scots were comparing notes on their hill-climbing day so I escaped for a pint at the then flourishing Glen Affric Hotel across the road. On my return, the trio were still engaged in hill talk.

They asked where I'd been that day. Glen Strathfarrar? Had I done the four? The four? Four what? Then I twigged – they were talking about Munros. Well, I admitted, I wasn't there to climb hills – I was looking at trees. That seemed to perplex them.

Some months later I read the following in The Coniston Tigers, a book by the Lakeland writer and climber Harry Griffin (whom I once met at his home in Kendal when he was old): ‘One poor day I went off on my own to collect the four Munros in Strath Farrar. After completing the traverse in heavy rain, when swollen burns had to be waded . . .’ and so on. When he came down to the road, a man in a car, ‘an unusual sight in that glen’, offered him a lift which he declined because his gear was so wet.

Cars are no longer unusual in Glen Strathfarrar but they're accepted only on sufferance. Who's glen is it, anyway?

That I may discover.