The 'Old Salt', Hopeman, on the Moray Firth. Home of tall sea fearing tales and lost souls between 21 and 81.

I arrived in the sunshine six hours after riding down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh in support of the Rifles returning from Afganistan. Not worthy - I certainly wasn't. But those men who marched down the Mile an hour later certainly were. Their faces were something everybody should see and nobody forget.

Young men marching with precision pride and emotion. Men, who had seen 30 of thier closest come back from patrol in bags if not blown to bits at their side. Men who felt pride and heartache in equal measure. They made it home - many didn't. Why?

And the welcome home was heartfelt. These young men are the front line of all we are. And they did it, and they took the pain, and some of them came home, and they are proud, and they are hurt, and they are welcomed, and they are frightended, and their view of the world will never ever be the same. 

They have something most of us never have - for better or worse.

I cried - and by 6.30, I was on the Moray Firth looking for a place to pitch my tent and find a pub.