More than these simple differences, wildness flourishes in the minds of country folk, and expresses itself in ways no English people could possibly think up.
One quirk is in the attitude to money. Nor is it only that gamekeepers are still allowed to use alphachloralose poison – long banned here – for the control of vermin. Any expedition into the Irish countryside brings home the fact that across the water things are much wilder and more elemental than in the sanitized pastures of the mainland. It is not just that the poorest farm land looks hairier than any in England, or that the lanes, when they wind into the mountains, grow grass along the wheel tracks as well as in the centre. The Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team costs pounds 20,000 to run each yearThe Scottish Avalanche Hotline is 01463 713191 or can be accessed on the Internet on htpp:// www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/other/ avalanche/If you would like to make a donation to the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team, send it to: The Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Association, Achantoul, Aviemore, Inverness-shire, PH22 1ZW. Do you like pasta?”And with that he radioed his wife in nearby Kingussie with instructions that he was bringing a tired, cold Englishman off the mountain and home for tea.Everything you need to know about the CairngormsIn the 1994/95 winter, 12 people were killed by avalanches and 70 brought off the mountains (of which 21 were injured)The Scottish Mountain Safety Rescue Study examined all mountain rescue incidents in Scotland between 1964 and 1993 and found that more than 73 per cent of those involved had not considered themselves at riskOnly 0.01 per cent of people visiting the Scottish hills are likely to be involved in an accidentThe avalanche season in the Cairngorms lasts from mid-December to mid- AprilAll members of Scottish mountain rescue teams are unpaid volunteers. You’ve just got to get on with your job and get your people down It’s not up to us to make judgements.

They are full of tales of past rescues: the man from London who slid 60ft off a snow field and down a crevasse, the face of a 10-year-old girl who died minutes before they found her, and the rescue the previous night (the busiest of the year to date) when 11 climbers were missing in five separate incidents.Sometimes John and all 37 other members of his team can be out on the hills for up to 18 hours in temperatures that can dip as low as -20C, but they are not bitter, even when they are sure an emergency could have been avoided by, say, a check of the Avalanche Service’s well-publicised daily report.”You can’t feel like that about this job,” says John, squinting up at a line of four climbers attempting the treacherous Goat Track snow gully.”All these people on the mountains are here to enjoy themselves and sometimes that means taking risks. We slump into a snowhole and I ask him what makes someone want to volunteer to take these risks.”I suppose the answer I should give you is that I’m dedicated to the mountains and the people who walk them and I want to do something to help, which is true, but what happened was that I got pissed in the pub one night and was talked into joining by him,” says Willie, pointing to John Allen, team leader and local pharmacist.Such mountain banter is cheering – just the sort of thing to warm you when you’ve been plucked from probable death on a cliff face. The wind gets stronger, slapping our hoods against our faces. We scramble over the ridge and slither down on to a sheltered snow field from where we can just make out the purple jackets of the team in the valley below.By the time we reach them I am exhausted, stumbling, gasping for breath. I’ve covered less than three miles an hour with a light pack and carrying no rescue equipment – a fraction of the strain the team are usually under. Willie Anderson hands me a cup of coffee and grins at me through a beard of icicles. We haul ourselves out of the corrie, our ski-poles and boot edges chipping at the frozen surface.Peter moves with tremendous speed across the ice.

As an experienced member of the rescue team, he is used to the pace At the ridge we lose the sun. We leave Wes and Tom, who have sliced out a block of snow and are measuring its temperatures and crystal textures.A break in the cloud has revealed a stunning mountain backdrop, brilliant white in the sunlight. The rest of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue team are on an exercise in the next valley and want us to link up with them before the weather gets worse.To do that we must traverse the high frozen ridge of Fiacaill a Choire Chais on the side of Cairngorm mountain. Could it revolutionise mountain rescue?”I doubt if it will be useful for saving lives,” says Wes, “but it could speed up the recovery of dead bodies significantly.