6 JANUARY 1996, Page 30

After

After the red wines and the white, or spiced or resinous, and after the coffee from Columbia or Kenya, liqueurs or rarest Malts, and after all such, to find myself after long climb beside a mountain burn and there, amid the birch and rowan, where it falls over the granite boulders, to bow my head and kneel and taste again.

Gael Turnbull