An occasional feature of F&F is a look at `A Week in the Life' of a particular storyteller. For a change Bob Pegg has given us a look at a year in his life.

It was a year when work took me away from the Highlands and showed me other worlds: I performed in rural Cumbrian schools while smoke from the pyres of animal corpses fringed the horizons; had my car broken into in Leeds, and the lap-top nicked; drove round a boarded-up Burnley, and missed the riots in Bradford by a day.

Back here in the North, along with drama worker Judith Aitken, I toured the Storytelling Yurt up the west Ross-shire coast, from Applecross to Achiltibuie, led a storywalk through the revitalised Spa Gardens in Strathpeffer, binged on stories at Martinmas, and was haunted by a door-rattling ghost in Kirkwall's Royal Hotel. Strange contrasts.

There were many high points in our storytelling year, and touring the yurt was one. It's a perfect venue for sparsely-populated rural areas: fits into an estate car, goes up in an hour, inside or out, and acts as its own publicity; people are drawn like midges to the bright images on its felt jacket (though in the evening, at the appropriate time of year, midges are also drawn to the people).

In July, harper Bill Taylor and I took "Waking the Beast", our Pictish Tribute show of story, music and song, to the elegant new heritage centre in Applecross. We were able to perform for an audience of 70 people of all ages, before a glass wall that framed the old church, founded in 673 by St. Maelrubha and where, a thousand years on, the descendants of his Pictish converts still famously sacrificed bulls in his name.

Alec Williamson, whose stories come directly from a Ross-shire Traveller background, continues to astonish. This year he did it by enthralling the audience at the Cromarty storytelling club with the 50-minute long "Travails of Ruaridh". Translating the story directly from his native Gaelic, Alec took three brothers in search of work on a picaresque Odyssey from rural Sutherland, via encounters with shape-changing cat-women, magical gifts, cozening gentry, and an island "off the back-side of Turkey" where consumption of the local apples makes horns grow on your head.

The storywalk in Strathpeffer took place over two nights in late September. It was just part of a festival to celebrate the life of the (probably mythical) Brahan Seer, a 17th century Highland prophet who came to a sticky end in a burning tar barrel after his gloomy prognostications had cut too close to the bone for the local aristocracy. There were children dressed as miming tramps, me in a brocade smoking jacket, a 20-strong singing group and hundreds of candles lining the pathways of the Strathpeffer Spa Gardens. But in this Victorian-inspired fantasy world the recent events of 11th September gave the old stories – with their motifs of violence, revenge, courage, love and sacrifice – a resonance that made them as fresh as a news bulletin.

On 26th October, National Storytelling Day, I found myself on an island in its way just as magical as Alec Williamson's Turkish haven - Papa Westray, in Orkney. I was in the company of Tom Muir, a man who is pretty much single-handedly keeping Orkney storytelling alive. Tom works as an archaeologist. He took me to see the most ancient standing dwelling in northern Europe – 6000 years old, and what a venue it would be for storytelling – as well as showing me how to play "buckie" shells (winkles where I come from) by blowing into them. In his mother's day their shrill call was used to guide fog-bound fishermen safely to shore.

Arriving in Papay by the shortest scheduled flight in the world (James, my wooden dancing doll, had to travel in the hold, lest I be tempted to use him as a weapon in an act of terrorism), Tom and I spent much of the day in the delightful school and, after exploring and a banquet of a meal, spent the evening telling stories and playing music for a gathering of half the island's population – around 35 people. Great company, wonderful hospitality, the visit was the high point of my time at the Orkney storytelling festival, Tall Tales for Short Days, which itself was one of the high points of the year.

There was scarcely time to wave goodbye to the Old Man of Hoy before we were into the third Tales at Martinmas (Martinmas being on 11th November), the annual festival which I run, along with Mairi MacArthur, for Ross and Cromarty Cultural and Leisure Services. Though people come quite a long way – this year we had folk from Lewis, Aberdeen and Skerray – it's essentially a local festival, and it was good to have Highland storytellers Janet MacInnes and Andrew Mackintosh playing major roles in the proceedings. Because we spread ourselves throughout Ross-shire we manage to reach an audience of around 2000 and to use some stunning venues, which in 2001 included the site of the Pictish monastery at Tarbat in Easter Ross. Each year the festival yields particular delights for me. I relished Stanley Robertson's demonstration of fortune-telling – "just for fun" but uncannily accurate all the same – and the sudden realisation that, had Stanley been living 100 years ago he would surely have been up there with the likes of Dan Leno as one of the great music-hall stars. There was magic all through the festival: Lawrence Tulloch's whole presence, embodying with gentle humour the rich traditions of his native Yell; Heather Yule bringing youth, beauty and music (the first quality at least in very short supply in the professional storytelling world); Dr Simon Taylor's lightly-borne erudition in the place-names workshop; North Yorkshire author Julian Atterton's gripping half-hour retelling of his own book "The Shapechanger" – more of those long stories please. And I couldn't finish without mentioning the session in Cromarty where three women from different Traveller backgrounds and generations – Sheila Stewart, Essie Stewart, and Jess Smith – exchanged anecdotes, reminiscence and family history. Comedy, tragedy, unbuttoned bawdiness and sheer humanity thronged an hour of popular entertainment at its finest. Unforgettable.

Finally, back to that ghost. At 3.15 in the early hours of 26th October, sound asleep in my room in the Royal Hotel, Kirkwall, I was shaken awake by a rattling at the door. I had no doubt that it was the venerable storyteller David Campbell, who, occupying the room next to mine, had understandably, given the hour, mistaken my door for his. Before I could shout out, the rattling stopped. David, plainly having realised his mistake, let himself into his own room, went to the toilet (the bathroom adjoined my bedroom), and then began to run a bath; first the hot water, then the powerful swoosh of the cold, then a silence, followed by intermittent bubbling noises of dubious origin. But it wasn't David. No, he said - when I later confronted him in a roundabout way, by telling the story of The Storyteller Who Couldn't Get to Sleep - he'd gone to bed at 1.00am and, the clincher, his room didn't have bath, just a shower. So who tried to get into my hotel room that morning in Kirkwall? I've no idea, but I thank them profoundly.

It's great to have a new story, especially one that's true.

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