I’ll never forget the drive up to Glen Dye Cuttieshillock House – a proper Cairngorms adventure that started with me taking a wrong turn near Banchory and ending up splashing through a ford that wasn’t on my sat-nav. Mud everywhere, the car groaning like an old man with a dodgy knee, and me laughing at my own daftness as I finally pulled into the gravel drive of this cracking stone cottage, nestled in the glen with hills rolling off like they’d been rumpled by a giant’s hand.

First impressions? Blimey, it was love at first sight. The house sat there all sturdy and welcoming, smoke curling from the chimney, with a babbling burn right nearby and sheep eyeing me suspiciously from the field. But honestly, it was the locals who turned arrival into something unforgettable – a parade of quirky characters who made me feel like I’d stumbled into a Highland sitcom.

No sooner had I parked than old Tam, the farmer from up the glen, trundled over in his battered Land Rover. He must’ve been in his seventies, with a beard like a bird’s nest and trousers held up by pure willpower. “Ye’ve made it then, lad?” he barked, peering at my muddy wheels. “Thought the ford’d claim another Sassenach victim.” I explained my navigational blunder, and he cackled, slapping his thigh. “Sat-navs! They’ll haud ye tellt ye’re in Aberdeen when ye’re knee-deep in Glen Dye bog.” Over a cuppa he’d insisted on brewing – strong as tar, mind – Tam regaled me with tales of the ’87 great sheep escape, when his flock broke free and terrorised the postie all the way to Strachan. “Dinnae fash,” he winked, “they’re quieter noo, but watch yerself at dusk.” His dry wit had me in stitches, and as he drove off, tipping his flat cap, I felt properly settled.

Then there was Moira, the postie who doubled as the glen’s unofficial historian. She rocked up mid-afternoon with a parcel that wasn’t mine – “Ach, it’s for the bothy doon the road, but ye can hear the story first.” A wiry woman in wellies and a hi-vis vest, with eyes twinkling like the Dee in sunlight, she plonked herself on the garden bench and launched into the legend of Cuttieshillock’s hidden bothy, supposedly a smugglers’ den from the old illicit whisky days. “Yer hoose overlooks it, ye ken,” she confided, pointing vaguely at the trees. “But dinnae go pokin’ – last incomer fell in the burn and lost his specs.” Her gossip was gold: whispers about the laird who once raced his tractor against a stag, and how the glen’s red squirrels outsmart the greys every time. We chatted for ages, her laugh echoing off the hills, until she remembered her rounds and pedalled off on her bike, shouting, “Mind the midges come evenin’!”

Evening brought wee Jimmy, the shepherd lad – couldn’t have been more than 16, with freckles and a sheepdog called Glen that herded invisible sheep around my boots. He’d come to check the fences, or so he said, but really it was an excuse for a blether. “First time in Glen Dye?” he asked, wide-eyed. Aye, I nodded, and off he went: stories of his granny’s scones winning the Fell Pony Show, the time a pine marten nicked his lunch, and how the stars here make city lights look rubbish. “Ye can see the Milky Way plain as day,” he said, gazing up as dusk fell. His enthusiasm was infectious, pure unfiltered joy that had me chuckling at his impressions of Tam’s accent.

Lying in that first night, fire crackling in the cosy living room, I had a quiet moment of reflection. Amid the chatter and characters, I realised how these encounters – raw, unpolished, full of that inimitable Scots warmth – strip away the noise of everyday life. No grand plans for the next days yet, just the promise of more blether with Glen Dye’s finest. What a start to three days in the Cairngorms.