Stone Country

Ben Brotherton has put on his civic-minded beanie and visited Arran with spade and brushes to help uncover the giant Mushroom boulder. This impressive stone always suffered from a lack of decent top-outs, with many lines ending in jump-offs below sandy earth, turf, moss, other generic greenery and old tree stumps. Ben has now cleaned up many top-outs and the boulder is blessed with the precious summit experience. Here's a new 'complete' line from Ben showing the highball fun on the biggest holds you could wish for!

The most debebilitating illness for any climber aside from the obvious broken bones, death and torn tendons, is viral labyrinthitis, an inner ear vertigo which is like stepping off a kids' roundabout and the feeling sticks. For weeks. A recuperative bout of doing nothing on a non-climbing island seemed appropriate until I grew so frustrated with inactivity I wobbled out of bed and set about the island like a lunchtime drunk looking for a pub. Gigha is a pretty island of meadows and rippled beaches, but it has little rock above chin height, and if it were a PC it would be a 250mb laptop from the 90s, in climbing bittage. However, it is not quite devoid of bouldering algorithms: the craggy trig point Marilyn of Craig Bhan has some white amphibolite slabs and the easy track up to the modest summit leads to some intricate and technical slabs and cracked grooves. An hour of rehabilitating wobbles on these slabs with friends spotting with big mats is the perfect antidote for stepping o...

Dumbarton FC have made an access statement about parking at Dumby: "We are still experiencing continual gypsy/traveller encampments and as such bollards will be installed within the next few days. The bollards will be up whenever the stadium is closed which will include weekends and the hours of 4pm-9am weekdays when the stadium is open." Gilbert Lawrie, Dumbarton FC. Also, a new link-up on the Home Rule boulder: Art Attack 7b Cobra sending Art Attack at Dumby 7b? from Chris Houston on Vimeo .