Glen Nevis New Bouldering

The Pagan Direct Font 7b+

I visited Dave MacLeod in Glen Nevis for a flying visit to get a couple of last pics for the forthcoming new Stone Country guide, with Dave close to a couple of projects on the Heather Hat. We worked a few lines and noted Tom Ballard's new line through the roof on the left -a crimpy lock from a dubious flake crimp. I noticed that the old Pagan Uillean line had a more direct start and a logical link to the widest part of the roof... feeling a little heavy and unfit, I handed it to Dave, who came close on the first attempt, until diminishing returns set in! With tired arms, we began a leggy hunt for a few new boulders and crags on the hillsides - we weren't disappointed and came away with a haul of new projects from Font 5 through to at least Font 8b+, possibly 8c (those ones are for Dave, not me). It was encouraging to see Dave's endless enthusiasm and drive, we both got inspired by some new undeveloped lines and it was heartening to see that the Glen still has a host of new climbing for the adventurous. It was a little dark for photography, so we hiked further up the hill to get some shots of a stunning looking Ben Nevis and Aonach Beag... we should really have been up on the ice!

Well, the Stone Country Guide to Bouldering in Scotland is done and will be available from March - thanks to all who helped with the research and thanks to all the keen boulderers out there brushing up new problems and areas... well done, you're all adding to a very vibrant climbing scene. Hopefully the new colour guide will encourage boulderers to visit some of the forty odd new and stunning bouldering venues, as well as attempting all the hundreds of excellent new three-star problems done since 2005!

Advance orders can be placed on the right through the Paypal button. As a pre-pub offer, all orders will be despatched first class FREEPOST on publication.

Happy Bouldering! Time for Stone Country to move on to other projects!

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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