Rothiemurchus makes its claims by Marista Leishman

Signage, leaflets and maps in dispenser boxes, discrete outdoor entertainment are there, and visitors find themselves encouraged to share the stewardship of the place, even as they enjoy it. And so they tend not to drop their lighted match or cigarette end, park their car where it suits them and nobody else, walk away from their litter, or ride mountain bike calamitously through everything.

Earlier times produced a famous visitor. Elizabeth Grant lived through the 19 th century, and wrote her Memoirs of a Highland Lady, a diary telling of her family's visits to their inherited home at The Doune. Walks through the estate presented rushing burns which must be negotiated with courage and nimbleness rather than bridges; wild raspberries were to be gathered in abundance, and the quaint ways of neighbours, to whom obligation visits must be paid, were written up with humorous observation. As for The Doune, her father obsessionally altered and enlarged his house, and then altered the alterations, with new household tasks attaching to each accretion and more servants to each task. After that he went bankrupt.

This was the retinue that made its Sunday way to the little old Rothiemurchus Kirk and sat wedged in behind the laird in their pew. The minister read out the metrical psalm - 'from a dirty book' , said Elizabeth , and then handed it down to the precentor. There then followed a 'serious, severe screaming, quite beyond the natural pitch of the voice, a wandering search after the air by many who never caught it.setting both the dogs and the babes to screaming also.' At which unable any longer to bear the din, the minister tapped the precentor on the head and it stopped.'

With the coming of the railway - the station was opened in 1898 - more visitors came. But for good reason the famous hospitality once failed. On a wild night a lone householder, perturbed, refused accommodation to two men heavily clad against the weather, telling them that she was full. The next house took them in, after they had gone the signature in the visitor's book read: Ramsay Macdonald.

At the time the village hadn't even an inn; but in the 1960's it had the misfortune to be designated the first purpose built-resort for the Highlands . Aviemore became a cross between a shantytown and a Mediterranean tourist centre. Now we may look for some improvement as, in the name of business tourism, the £5.2 million Highland Conference Centre opens.

Even so, today's visitor will be more inclined to look to the hills than to the computer. Theirs is a fraternity springing from two separate traditions. One of these is rooted in the Highlands and Islands and in the urgency for food and survival. Sea birds and their eggs were a harvest to be won from precipitous cliffs; sheep shepherded from the intimidating places that the nimble creatures reach. And local people regularly facing danger and weather extremes. They didn't climb for fun.

This was how Ishbel Mackay, daughter of our Gaelic Poet Sorley Maclean, remembered it. Growing up in Plockton and on Raasay she remarked how many of her father's generation looked on with amusement as increasing numbers of visitors made for the hills, kitted out in the latest climbing and weather gear. But while for many Highlanders the hills were a necessity, not a sport, others, including Sorley (who was apt to go off without saying where he was going) climbed for the love of the hills. As does Ishbel herself and many more highlanders who have inherited a feeling for the hills - even an enchantment.

The second tradition belongs to affluent man of the Victorian era. They went to the Swiss Alps to climb - until, by the middle of the century they started to look to the hills of home for sport: to Snowdonia, the English Lakes and the Scottish Highlands . Through all this a new influence was at work; it was the discovery that the natural world and scenic splendour might impact significantly on a person's life. The source of this revelation had been at work 50 years before; not many, however, connected the experience with the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

'..The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock

The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite.....'

Wrote Wordsworth in 'Tintern Abbey'.

But what Wordsworth could do for sensibilities commercial interests could do for practicalities: there is a huge industry for the outdoors with clothing and equipment outlets multiplying.

Out of this grows the movement to conserve: the Cairngorm National Park embraces the lands from Braemar to the old Inverness-shire - Perthshire boundary, and a movement is at work for the inclusion of Beinn a'Ghlo and Glen Shee in the National Park area. The Perth Alliance for the Real Cairngorms - PARC - is supported by RSPB, NTS, Ramblers Association and many more.

It's for the young to run - or scramble - the 27 miles from Braemar to Aviemore through the Lairig Ghru. Murray and I choose the more modest slopes of Craigellachie behind Aviemore, from where we may enjoy the spreading view across the plain of Rothiemurchus to Ben Macdui and Braeriach, between them the dark entry to Lairig itself, the incomparable panorama of the Cairngorm massif.