Wanderlust, with the emphasis on the wander.

When the Norsemen first travelled to The Isle of Skye they dubbed it Skuyö, or ‘Cloud Island.' Even today one of the Gaelic names for Skye, Eilean a' Cheò, translates to 'island of the mist.'

Poetic though it may be, the sheer aptness of the name was hard to appreciate until my fourth day on the island, when I found myself lost and alone among the clouds.

I had found a group of fellow hobby walkers, the kind of people who know what a crampon is but have never needed to use one. With them, I set out to walk Bruach na Frithe, a walk that someone had heard through a drawn-out game of barstool Chinese whispers, offered the best views of the whole island.

As we climbed the first part of the mountain, the mist was the exact kind of gothic-romantic that many ‘alternative’ music videos rely on. It was just enough to add some mystery, to convince me that I wasn’t actually a spotty teenager in someone else’s clunky boots, but a beautiful romantic heroine in a black lace gown.

Even then, I was beginning to expect that the claim of good views may have been a joke, or that it was based on that one week a year when Scotland is vaguely sunny.

It took two hours for me to start lagging behind. I should have known then that I was out of my depth. My feet still stung with the blisters from previous days’ walking, and thanks to a combination of genetically short legs and a childlike awe at my surroundings that far surpasses my basic survival instincts, I was never that fast to begin with.

Another hour still and the group had disappeared into the mist, on the borderline of me starting to question whether they ever actually existed.

It was then that the friendly mist started to turn. It clung to my skin like seaweed to a drifting lifeboat. It dragged at my plodding frame, forcing me further down and bringing sharp tear-pricks to my eyes.

In the end I stopped, more through necessity than any real willingness. I was beginning to panic, and the vast, invisible landscape began to overwhelm me. I have no idea how long I was suspended in that state, trying desperately to create my own salvation in that never-ending cloud.

I took in one last look at the nothingness, and set off walking, following in footsteps that I couldn’t see.