FORGET fast food.
When Rosie Hazelton cooks lamb, there can be a six hour wait for its arrival on the plate, but it is a wait that is well worth it.
"We had a group of friends up, so we dug a pit, put the lamb in it and let it cook," Rosie explained.
"They all said they had never tasted lamb so good."
The secret to Rosie’s cooking is that it is not just old fashioned, but positively prehistoric.
A qualified archaeologist, Rosie draws upon that academic background to offer clients of her tourism business, Wild Rose Escapes, a taste of the Highlands in quite a literal way.
Beyond the more typical walking and wildlife tours, Wild Rose Escapes has added yoga and relaxation but also offers crafts and cookery with a traditional edge.
These include learning not just to cook in the way of Highlanders of old, but to forage for food as our ancestors would have 200 or even 2000 years ago.
Rosie runs Wild Rose Escapes with her partner Alex, also a qualified archaeologist, at Higher Crochail woods just outside Cannich, and the couple’s unusual mix of holiday options has already netted the young business some attention.
They have been listed for the Virgin Responsible Tourism Awards and Rosie collected the runner-up prize in the Best Tour Operator for Local Experiences category at the awards ceremony at London’s Excel centre earlier this month.
"We were so thrilled to be nominated," Rosie said.
"You work away on your own, so it’s great to feel part of something like that. It’s nice to get a pat on the back and know we are heading in the right direction."
What is also enjoyable for Rosie is that her business also gives her a change to revisit her archaeological background.
"The landscape up here has so many Iron Age hut circles everywhere that it grabs your interest, even if you are not really aware of it to start with," she said.
"What I enjoyed most about archaeology was the experimental side of things. When you dig a big pit in the ground and fill it with wood and see what happens, it’s kind of trial and error. It doesn’t always go according to plan, so it’s been really good fun actually."
It was a job as a cook at the Cape Adventures adventure school in Sutherland which first brought Rosie to live in the Highlands, but she was already familiar with the area.
"We’d come to Scotland a lot when I was younger because my dad used to work up here," Rosie said.
"I’ve always loved the landscape and wild mountains are always something I wanted to live near. I’m from Wiltshire originally, all rolling hills, so it was very different from what I’d been used to. I just came up for six months originally, but when it ended I thought: ‘Why would I want to go back?’"
So Rosie and Alex set up their own holiday business, starting off in the Ullapool area using rented or borrowed accommodation.
Rosie already had tour leader experience after working with adventure holiday specialist Explore. Her work there and with Charity Challenge, which organises big charity events, gave her the confidence to start a business of her own. Especially in combination with Alex’s skills and experiences which range from serving as a ship’s mate in the Tall Ships Race to building a recreation Iron Age hut.
"Ullapool was just perfect for where we started because there was the combination of accommodation we needed, we had the mountains, we had the sea and we were on a farm," Rosie said.
"We always wanted to buy our own land, though. We thought it might be in Ullapool, but it’s really difficult to get land up there, then, just by accident, we found the woods just outside Cannich."
The woods at Higher Crochail, discovered while giving a lift to a backpacker, provided a perfect environment for the couple to develop their unique take on Highland holidays.
Crochail, with its own barn and sheep and the ingredients for natural dye lying all around, is the right location for the craft side of the couple’s business. Their surroundings also provide a natural larder for the cooking element.
"These days when we’re out, you think: that’s edible or that can be used for this colour of dye. The landscape is so conducive to craft skills such as natural dyeing because everything you see around you has possibilities," she said.
"I found that really inspiring and developed the courses from that. The landscape is such a part of traditional crafts up here that it just makes sense. People love being out and about and seeing beautiful places, but it’s even more satisfying if you are collecting things along the way, learning skills.
"Whatever we do tends to be outdoors if possible, so people are spending the whole day outside, doing something they haven’t done before and just love it, especially if you live in Glasgow or Edinburgh or London. As well as seeing things, people love to be part of things as well. That’s the recipe for our holidays really."
However, in contrast to making use of traditional Scottish skills when it comes to dyeing, last year Rosie made the long journey to Mongolia to study felting. Yet even on the Mongolian Steppes she found a link to the Highlands.
"What I most enjoyed when I was out there was that it was a real group activity," Rosie explained.
"Felting’s quite strenuous, so it’s quite tiring. That’s why it’s really good to do it in a group because you push each other on. I visited a woman’s co-operative and they felted 10 hours a day, six days a week. They worked in groups and they chatted and sang and made the time pass and I realised that was the way to do it. You need to have music and chanting and that’s the way they used to do it in the Highlands too.
"It was lovely to realise that it might be far away and culturally different, but when you get down to it, it wasn’t that different really."
Rosie had hoped to stay in Mongolia for a month, but by the time she arrived she was pregnant with daughter Thora and was forced to cut the visit short.
She still has a Mongolian contact in Aruuna, a social worker who teaches traditional skills, and she and Rosie have talked about the possibility of bringing her to the Highlands to teach Mongolian felting techniques in person.
"She didn’t speak much English, so it was a massive learning experience for both of us, this English girl coming along from Scotland to learn from her. What was nice was that for those two weeks I just felt that I was part of everyday Mongolian life. It was really good," Rosie said.
This was not the first time Rosie has crossed continents to learn craft skills from source.
When she was 18 she spent six weeks in Java learning the traditional dyeing technique of batik.
"That’s what made me realise the best way of learning a craft was going to the root of it," Rosie explained.
"You have a whole different perspective and that combines with my love of archaeology. If you look at the root of something, you learn a lot more. And people love teaching you skills. It’s human nature."
Up until that Mongolian visit, Rosie was a keen traveller, her work with Explore taking her to exotic locations while as an archaeologist she participated in expeditions to Central America — real Indiana Jones’ territory. These days, however, with a baby and a business to look after, it looks as though she will be sticking closer to home.
"The travel bug will always be in me, but I think I’ve settled a bit and now that I have Thora, going to the awards in London was quite an adventure, never mind going to Mongolia!" she laughed.
"We’re also so busy here. We’ve put down roots and my interests are very much home based."
However, Rosie acknowledged that living in Highlands does go some way towards satisfying the couple’s sense of adventure, and having only lived in the Cannich area for a year, there is still plenty to explore on their doorstep.
"We are still learning so much about living in the woods and living here in winter is an adventure in itself," Rosie added.
"We live down a track, so we’re not sure if we are going to get out any time it snows!"
