In which I begin the great Scottish tablet giveaway

This is official vanilla butter tablet, similar to fudge but a little crisper. This particular tablet was made in Crieff by Gordon & Durward, which has been around since 1925 and is hailed as one of Scotland's best sweet shops.

Tempted? Well I bought 11 bars (12 actually- one is for me. Tee hee). I wasn't joking when I said the first 10 followers will receive a treat. JP doesn't count in this instance - he will receive...other treats. But I don't feel like waiting until there are 10 people in the little box. I want to send candy in the post NOW.

So if you're in the little box over there, please email me your address to scotland4thesenses@googlemail.com. Unless you are Jacqui or Moe, in which case I have your address. Macheline, you should send me your address, too - I bought an extra bar for you. A bar for Craig as well. If you're not in the little box but follow along some other way and you would like to try some tablet, email me anyway as the chance of more tablet is entirely possible. But please email within the next week, as I would like to send everything at once in order to frighten the Royal Mail lady.

I hope to send away a treat each month, although after this it will likely be to just one person - pull a name out of a hat kind of thing. I promise not to send anything tacky like tartan hats with fake ginger hair attached to them, or those horrible nuclear green nessie toys. Only lovely things to send your senses on holiday to Scotland. Hurrah for treats!

**UPDATE** This giveaway has now finished. I do a wee giveaway every month; please feel free to take part!

A magical life in the Faerie Glen

First imagine that you are very small. You are the height of a pencil, slight and nimble, with a pair of transparent wings growing from your back. In the mornings your wings are covered with dew, and when you unfurl them the light hits the moisture, causing your wings to gleam as if they were studded with gems.

You live in the Faerie Glen on the Isle of Skye. In Gaelic your home is called Balnaknock, which means the hamlet of the rounded hills. A string of landslides created these mounds, which were smoothed by time and ice. Now they are like magic cones capping a world of never-ending green.

The days are yours to sweep between the hills or nestle in the branches of the tree that overlooks the loch. Sometimes the wind curls around the grassy mounds like ribbon, threatening to sweep you away. But you know how duck between the rocks for shelter, and sometimes you fly low to the ground all the way up to the where the waterfall has created a pocket in the earth, and hide there.

You love the long days of summer most of all, when the sun pushes warmth into the soil and the plants seem to ache with life. You spend each sunset sitting atop the rocky tower known as Castle Ewen, surveying the land and calling to the sheep, who look around dumbly but never see you.

Your whole life will stretch out in this manner, a slow churning of the seasons and your own love for this enchanted place, a tumbling lush land that was massaged from the greater world, forever playing out a gentle drama beneath the dome-like sky.

New lamb waking up, feeding

These were also taken in Polin, but you can see lambs all over Scotland in the spring. It is one of my favourite sights, these gleaming white bundles of white wool against the green hillsides. As they grow they become strong and muscular, jumping off small hills, chasing and head-butting each other.

But while they are very young they never leave their mothers' sides, following them through the fields, crying and running to catch up if they stray more than a few feet away. This baby is obviously very new - you can see the umbilical cord still attached, and the blood staining the mother's legs.

Storm brewing at Polin Beach

On the way to Kinlochbervie, it is easy to pass by this tiny village, but somehow we decided to take the turn, park the car and walk through the farmer's field down to this small arch of white sand and black rocks.

If only you could see the wind, cold and wild and creating a bouncy updraft for the seagulls that soar above the cliffs, where white-washed cottages stand braced against the weather. The wind was so strong it almost erased the smell of the sea. We stood alone above the sand and watched the storm approach, a dark bulge gathering up the horizon.