Due to some requests for more information, I've put together a wee bouldering guide booklet for Arran. This is available free on the Boulder Scotland site via the Arran page and the Issuu PDF webpage. You can click on the demo below and download the complete document for free. It's an attempt to inspire more dedicated bouldering on Arran as there are some king lines which really should be seen to... there's plenty of good circuit bouldering and plenty of development left for all.
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...