Posts

Showing posts from April, 2016

The Legacy of Names: Craigmore Crag

Image
Craigmore Jamies Overhang x4 from John Stewart Watson on Vimeo . Craigmore has always been a favourite haunt of mine. It's a small forested crag near Carbeth, north of Glasgow, just off the beaten track of the West Highland Way. It's been a popular top-roping and soloing spot for decades, ever since John Kerry ( blog here about him ) bussed out with gardening equipment to clean and garden the routes - it's a north-east facing crag and tends to gather a lot of dank moss and vegetation. John produced a guide to the climbing in the 'Glasgow Outcrops' guide by Highrange Sports (1975), describing the rock as 'macroporphyritic basalt, which looks rather like a cross between granite and gritstone'. The habitat is rock, moss, birch, oak, rowan, hazel, apple and willow, with two Scots pines acting as crag sentinels at each end. Owls, kestrels and smaller birds ghost through the canopy and bumble bees hum through the flowers and catkins in summer like vid