Stone Country News November

Image from 'Stone Play' - can you guess where it is?

It's been a hectic period putting books together, but finally Stone Play has been released and is receiving some good reviews. Two years in production, it maybe took a while, but hopefully folk will enjoy a bouldering circuit of historical photos and literary musings! Now I'm full time, I'm seeking publication ideas and commissions, so if you've something you want to publish, drop me an email at stonecountrypress@btinternet.com

Stone Play is available in shops now, or order online for Christmas from Cordee

On the Scottish bouldering front, I heard that Dave MacLeod, newly resident at Fortwilliam, is cleaning up the bouldering mythologies of Glen Nevis. He climbed the first confirmed ascent of the problem formerly known as The Morrighan which is the awesomely steep crimpy line under Pinnacle Ridge crag - we await a reappraisal. A few other projects fell in the glen and will be reported soon, John Watson having cleaned up an excellent traverse (Sylvestris Font 7a+) on the Pine Alp boulders above Whale Rock.

At Dumbarton, a young Glasgow Uni crew is eating up the 7c's and breaking down the 8a's rather too quickly for this veteran's liking! Ben Litster repeated Silverback, committing to the final move with an ear-shattering power yelp! There was an unassuming and impressive repeat of Pongo SS by Simon Westway (name correct?), and the harder lines seem a little closer to repeats by the younger generation.

'Silverback', Ben Litster cranking out another 7c

The North: earlier in the autumn Mike Lee did the first ascent of the Brin roof Susurrus Font 7c, which is an impressive line and an excellent testpiece for the campus kings. Richie Betts, Dave Wheeler and friends continue to develop the Inverness area, with new problems up to 7b at Duntelchaig, Cummingston, Kessock, Scatwell and Meig. Ian Taylor, Richie Betts and Lawrence Hughes have added more class problems to the Torridon Celtic Jumble, which is by no means worked out! Dedicated guides for these areas will follow in 2008. Clashfarquhar on the Aberdeen coast is now the new hard area to visit, with Tim Rankin having put up a number of impressively hard lines on the Big Grey boulder cluster, including Sweet Cheeks 7c+ and the hardest 7a on the planet (Clash Arete sit start!).

Clash Arete, Clashfarquhar

So what's next? Hot on the heels of Stone Play is the new Bouldering in Scotland guide, which we expect to be out early February. 80 venues or so, most of them refreshed, updated or just plain new... so get your projects done by Christmas if you want them in!

Vertical Landscapes: Exploring Glasgow's Hidden Bouldering

With the new guide to Glasgow Bouldering forthcoming, and with the last two years spent scouring our local landscapes for vertical diversion, many of us discovered a closer, more nuanced appreciation of climbing and how it helps maintain mental wellbeing as much as physical. The big mountains and wilderness landscapes were for the first time excluded from access and our pandemic taught us all to appreciate the landscapes on our doorstep. Even the urban world has its own small wildernesses and landscapes to immerse ourselves in for a while. For me, the daily walk in lockdown occasionally became a hunt for an esoteric piece of rock spied on the OS map or Google Earth. Rumours of boulders and mythologies of obscure rock were hunted down to help feed a hunger for the vertical. Even Dumbarton Rock was out of range, lying outside of the Glasgow City boundary. It's a venue which famously makes the blood run cold, with fiercely exposed overhanging routes, highball boulder problems and cl...

The Lost Township of Grulin on Eigg

‘The Stony Place’ as it translates, the archaeological notes on the RCAHMS database for Eigg, state baldly the lost humanity of Grulin as early as an 1880 OS survey map: ‘…eighteen unroofed buildings, six enclosures and a field-system’. Now a scheduled monument and memorialised as a ‘depopulated settlement’, though it is not obvious if the verb is passive or aggressive, Grulin Uachdrach (Grulin Upper) is, like Hallaig on Raasay, a place of violent silence and resonance. Who lived here and why was the site abandoned? If it were not in Scotland, suspicions might fall to the climate, remoteness and apparent unsustainability of the stony place, a rabble of large rocks under the steep slopes of An Sgurr, but the carefully constructed walls tell us it was once a thriving township – the kilns, folds and blackhouse walls integrated with the giant boulders such as Clach Hosdail. In 1853 the whole of the village of Grulin, both upper and lower, housed fourteen families who were forced to l...

Timeline Walks of Scotland #Hallaig to Screapadal on Raasay

'Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig ...' Hallaig - the lost village of Raasay - is a powerful place. Arguably, it has become a shibboleth for the soul of Gaelic culture. To visit it, to just be there momentarily and feel the resonance of the place, is to know the fragility of place and home, of how kinship can be shattered and how loss can invade a land. Aptly, Hallaig is now a site of pilgrimage for those who value the universal lessons of history. There are t errible reasons for the loss of Hallaig. Its silent mouths of abandoned shielings, the dumb sheep meandering amongst the ruins, whisper with Sorley MacLean's poetry. The place misses the sounds of day-to-day community, and all around the woods and burns and slopes this tough but rich landscape once made this a hardy paradise under the eastern cliffs of Raasay. Facing east to the dawn and overlooking the peninsula of Applecross and the berry-dark depths of the Inner Sound, the walk to Hallaig leads quietly...

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