Stone Country

A few fresh days walking on Mull exploring the excellent granite on the Ross, the Carsaig cliff path and the Gribun area amongst others. The bouldering and cragging is great, for more details see Colin Moody's site . Here's a map of some popular bouldering areas and some photos from the trip. View Mull Bouldering in a larger map

As part of a new series of books, Stone Country is expanding into other areas aside from just bouldering, though there will be plenty of new climbing books coming out. The walks books are designed to follow themes in the landscape and vary wildly. Here's an example of a good geology walk on the Isle of Arran, for example. Boulderers might want to pay attention!

Here are most of the best boulders on Arran in a slideshow, we're working on the guide which will be available at Stone Country soon.

From Sannox to Lochranza Coastal walk There is precious little limestone climbing in Scotland - the huge massif in Assynt has some potential, but at least in terms of bouldering there is something closer to home. I checked the geology map of Arran, which looks like a dartboard of colours around a swollen granite bullseye, and on the outer rim on the north east is a long coastal strip of limestone between Sannox and Lochranza. This is a mini-wilderness, with no road and the trail leads far away from the tourist strip of the Arran loop road. The 4 to 5 hour walk is fascinating in itself, the trail leading through old red sandstone to the Fallen Rocks which are a jumble of conglomerate boulders with maybe some potential, climbing the hill in a monolithic jumble to the giant crag of Creag a Chais (rock of cheese!). However, things change suddenly to limestone and just past the fallen rocks on the left is a sandstone/limestone sandwich forming a steep roof with some great looking problems o...