Circuit bouldering Scottish style

Caisteal Abhail summit tor the Press problem one of the finest on Arran Font 4 NR 967 442

Sannox Blocs NR997493S John watson on the lip traverse

Sannox Blocs NR997493S John Watson on the 6a lip traverse

Sannox Blocs NR997493S Great white problem follow the chalk

Sannox Blocs NR997493S Great White bloc the 6a lip traverse

Sannox Blocs NR997493S Claire Youdale trying the dyno

Sannox Blocs NR997493S lip traverse crux

Mushroom Boulder Merkland Wood NS 026 38 Claire Youdale on the pocket roof project

Mushroom Boulder Merkland Wood NS 026 38 Claire Youdale on her projects

Mushroom Boulder Merkland Wood NS 026 38 Claire Youdale on the Flakes roof

Mushroom Boulder Merkland Wood NS 026 387 this chappie fell on his head two seconds later

Sannox Blocs Great White Problem Sannox Boulder 7a plus NR997493S

Sannox Blocs NR997493S Great White Boulder

Sannox Blocs NR997493S Great White Dyno 5+ Claire Youdale

Caisteal Abhail summit tor The Press problem NR 967 442

Arran Bouldering, a set on Flickr.

The biggest, meanest, longest bouldering circuit?

I'd say Arran has a good chance of winning this one. Hop the 7am ferry, get a bus to North Glen Sannox and walk up into Coire nan Ceum, do about 20 of the best problems there (mostly slabs but a few choice roofs up to 6b), then nip up the Witch's Step to the Caisteal Abhail ridge. This has some fine bouldering all the way to the summit on some isolated blocs and on small tors beyond.

Drop down along the big arced ridge to the Cir Mhor summit and some architecturally challenging domino blocs with body-munching properties (and the Rosetta Stone, if you can find it). The silvery slabs on the south west flank of this hill have some compact rock and balancy problems.

At this point you might want to stop for some lunch, you'll be about 40 to 50 problems in. Got enough water? I couldn't find those springs marked on the 1:25,000 map, though I was convinced I could hear bubbling water under the stones.

Now drop down to Fionn Coire under the Rosa Pinnacle. Lots of fine easy bouldering on the howff boulders under the crag, then nip across the stream to the A Chir boulders, a fine compact collection of technical problems (and some big projects). About 30 or so problems up to 5c/6a.

By now, your feet should be raw meat, if it's a hot July day, and you'll be drinking water from the streams at every opportunity. Cramp-thighed, stomp down Glen Rosa to the Daingean boulders by the bivi stone at the path (Cuckoo pockets etc). About 10 problems here up to 7a, but you'll have no skin for that level.

A final haul down to the lower Rosa boulders (about 15 reasonable problems) and a well-deserved dip in the plunge pools of the Rosa burn, then see if you can make the 4.40 ferry.

To extend it properly into a form of alpine torture, walk over Goatfell's south ridge to drop down to Corrie and finish on this classic circuit and catch the later ferry (over 200 problems in total, about 15 miles walking). I made it to plunge pool in Glen Rosa and was done in . . . a blistering circuit, indeed.

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

Loch Lomond excursions

Climbing is deeply reassuring. Which seems odd to say, at first. There is so much anxiety around the climb, attached to anticipation, also to 'failure' and return, but when you are in the well, actually climbing, everything is as it should be – balanced. Climbing: it's not about imposing a sequence on the rock, more about accepting what choreography the rock will allow you, what it will release. It has to be studied in detail, with the body, not just the eye. Brushing and touching rock is the opening of the inner lens. The skin of the stone speaks with a deeper well of gravity and a resonance which can be felt only by touching the stone, gripping its friction, pulling into gravity's clasp and feeling that transmission of core and shaped mass. Shaped by pressure, wind, water, ice, the stone dictates its own movements from its own life. So when we boulder we are tracing something ancient rather than living any statement of the moment. Like following an invisible line or l

Stone Country

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