Three Winter days, all different, and yet alike...

A mid December day, one of the darkest of the year. Calm and foggy, rare weather indeed for the far north. An occasional spit of drizzle or the lightest puff of wind were the only things to change, though occasionally the cloud would lift to give a misty couple of miles visibility below a grey sheet at two hundred feet. This was a day for the coast, a good day for cycling without having to fight winds.

Castletown was still dark, the Dunnet road was empty in the grey early light, Scarfskerry was just waking. Further on, leaving the bike, I crossed a misty headland and clambered down to a bay where twenty or thirty seals splashed from rocks out into the sea. Their heads bobbed near the water's edge, watching this lone intruder walk their empty shore. Mist came and went on the coast road but had lifted enough for Stroma to be visible from John O'Groats. Although it was late morning almost nobody was about and the harbour was deserted other than for a pair of eider duck. The top of the Duncansby stacks rose into the fog, while below, the quiet grey rocky beaches gave a peace that in Summer is never found even at this relatively remote spot.

Back along the coast at Brough the tide was out, permitting a slippery crossing over seaweedy rocks to the stack. A bevy of seals splashed and snorted into the water leaving one, marooned in the middle of the exposed rocks, which snarled and hissed at me from a few yards away.

There was still time for a detour out to Dunnet Head, to watch the lighthouse beam sweeping out into the fog as dusk turned to dark on one of the shortest days of the year.

Christmas Eve by contrast was a day of sharp, cold clarity. A strong south-west wind, clear skies, hills 50 miles away crisp-white on the horizon but the nearer landscape still awaiting the first real snowfall. Beyond the horizon rose great wispy cumulonimbus, giving storms and blizzards on the West coast. The low sunlight was almost harsh, casting long shadows. Lochs were dark blue amid yellow-brown moors, and the bog pools had a thin crust of ice.

The bitter headwind gave hard cycling in the dark before dawn out to Westerdale and on to Loch More, but was more from the side for the run to Altnabreac, with the sun now up. Soft sand can make cycling these roads almost impossible, but on this occasion everything was frozen hard and only a few ruts required care. I carried on west, almost as far as Strath Halladale before leaving the roads and striking north across the heart of the flow country. An obvious route, linking a string of five remote lochs, leads to the end of the Shurrery Lodge track. To drag and wheel the bike this way was hard work, but worth the effort to traverse the heart of Caithness in the depths of Winter.

By what is, arguably, the remotest loch in the county, a strange thing happened. A bird looking like a grouse appeared, flying straight towards me and the bike. It landed about four feet away; it was dumpy, much smaller than a grouse and a very handsome speckled brown. As I watched in amazement it sat for a few seconds then scuttled a few feet and disappeared into a peaty hole at the water's edge. I could see it there, sitting motionless below a little peat overhang and could have reached down and stroked it. The only bird that fitted, from the books, was a quail - but such had no right to be in the middle of the flows in December.

I wandered up onto Ben Nam Bad Mor, one of my favourite local hills, to see the sunset over the moors. A couple of arctic hares seemed almost tame, only running off in a very unconcerned manner when just a few yards away. A thin layer of snow covered the summit; more would soon be coming!

A week later - Hogmanay, lying snow, frost, and brilliant sunshine belying a dreadful forecast. In some trepidation I drove the icy road down Strath Halladale in the early morning; there had been some drifting near Forsinard but the road was passable and I carried on over the bealach to leave the car a couple of miles on by the old roadside cottage. I'm always wary about leaving the car for hours on such a day as a rising wind and drifting snow can quickly block roads - but the weather looked set fair, with showers staying well to the west.

Cross-country skis gave steady progress over the deep snow-covered heather, with frozen dubh-lochs giving particularly easy going. After an hour I was climbing up towards the plateau, cutting across the slopes at an easy angle. Behind, the pure white slopes of the Griams, Ben Armine and the Sutherland hills looked incredibly remote - then came a familiar sound, and there was the two-coach Sprinter heading northwards looking like a toy train in wonderland. It must have been a superb ride from Inverness on such a day!

The sun appeared over the skyline, and soon I was on the ridge, heading south for the highest part of the Knockfin Heights. The skiing was quite slow, with grasses and heather showing through the snow, but vastly easier than slogging knee-deep on foot.

Views on such a day from the hills are beyond my humble powers of description. Factually, most of a white Caithness was visible, with the sea and Hoy in the distance, the Morven-Scaraben range, as well as all the Sutherland hills from Golspie to Klibreck,and from Ben Hee to Ben Hope. The wind was cold, but not that cold, and moderated as the day wore on. For an hour I skied around the Knockfin plateau, the frozen lochans giving excellent going. This is a place to visit either on a day such as this, or in June when the birdlife is at its best. Or go on a misty day in November for a test of route-finding - but don't forget the compass!

I managed to find gentle slopes down which even I could ski with only a couple of falls, and with surprisingly little effort was back at the car as the sun was setting. In the last hour of daylight of the year I carried on down to the shores of Loch an Ruathair, the track giving some of the best skiing of the day.

A full moon was rising above Meall a Bhealaich and the frost was setting in harder, as the silent white hills awaited the New Year.

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This is one of 75 essays on the Far North available in the book "Ralph's Far North" for £14.45. Visit www.curlewcottagebooks.com for more information.