Passengers seem to buy Scottish whisky as a final act before jetting off on a long journey: a token to be taken up into the air. Whiskies are delicious, prestigious. But their appeal worldwide is in their promise of a certain landscape, with labels that summon faraway glens, frosted Munros and rushing streams, some of whose currents have been captured. Many bottles are inscribed with the solemn fact: the word ‘whisky’ comes from the Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha, or ‘water of life.’
This water is — as often as it is not — from the basin of the River Spey, among the finest and fastest of Scottish rivers. The Spey and its many tributaries supply water for about half of Scottish distilleries: the region produces the sweetest, most expensive and, some say, the most illustrious malts in Caledonia. It’s the closest thing whisky has to a headquarters, a heartland — even a holy land. The region is a place of pilgrimage for whisky-lovers, some of whom hike or cycle between distilleries in trips of escalating wobbliness.
I’m here, however, to make a canoe expedition along the River Spey, starting from where it gathers momentum amid the Cairngorms and ending four days later where it braids out into the saltwater of the North Sea. Plenty of people arrive in the Cairngorms hoping to conquer their rocky summits and make ascents of the immense mountains. The descent of the Spey, by contrast, entails making not a conquest but
