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Showing posts from January, 2011

Ullapool Bouldering Guide

Ian Taylor's complete Ullapool bouldering guide is now available here and on the new  Stone Country Bouldering  site. This gives the most complete low-down to date on the bouldering round the capital of the North West: Rhue Blocks, Cnoc Breac, Tighnamara, Ardmair Beach, Ardmair Crag, Reiff in the Woods, Reiff and other areas.  Ullapool Bouldering Author: Ian Taylor Publisher: Ian Taylor 44 pp Full Colour Price: £4.99

'Heavy on fact, light on fairies' - The Stones of Strathearn

Andrew Finlayson, the producer behind One Tree Island Publishing, has brought out a lavish new guide to the standing stones of Strathearn. This fertile and secluded land, situated in the Earn valley between Perth all the way up its headwaters of Lochearn at St. Fillans, is home to some of Scotland's earliest monoliths, cup-marked rocks and stone circles. These distant echoes of a neolithic society still have a resonance to them, a tangible sense of place, and Andrew has produced this superbly illustrated gazetteer to  the history and provenance of these stones.  This convenient ring-bound book acts as both a guide to each site and a detailed history to its neolithic society, engineering, farming, astronomy and symbology. He details each stone meticulously and with  fine technical drawings and colour photography, including more famous monoliths such as the Sma Glen's  Ossian's Stone,  as well as 'quieter' but astronomically important stones such as  Tullybannocher

Ullapool Sandstone

Torridonian pebble The icy Christmas lasted well into the New Year and some fine blue days could be had in between the grey ones. Bouldering at Reiff in the Woods, Tighnamara and Ardmair was perfect on those days with no wind, but what with temperatures so minimal, the slightest wind made for perishing days on the rock. Tighnamara Traverse Reiff in the Woods has seen some new attention with Nigel Holmes cleaning and finding a classic wall on the Cubes area to give 'The Flood', a tough vertical grit-classic wall around the 6b mark which should become very popular.   Ann Falconer on Reiff In the Woods West Wall Tighnamara is a fine training venue which tends to be overlooked above Ardmair beach, but provides a quality training traverse and some sit starts when the burn is dry. Cnoc na Breac has a super pink leaning wall and a good summer circuit of walls and roofs around the crags. These areas and more are available in Ian Taylor's 'Ullapool Bouldering' gu