More summer bouldering in Scotland

Perhaps the worst time of the year to boulder in Scotland, July and August: midges still kicking about with the horseflies, the bracken at Jurassic height, the air humid and muggy, the rain biblical when it hits, impassable rivers in spate, the sun baking and lethargy-inducing. If you're not in the higher hills, it's a good time to head to the cooler coastal venues . . .

In Ayrshire, some new caving has been discovered, with plenty of potential. Some impressively steep caves may provide sport for the 8th grade climber and all will be revealed soon. Here's a pic of Colin Lambton on 'Mejico Prow', a fine 7a at the new venue.

Callum Johnson has been on the Isle of Arran and added a sit start to The Snare on Clach Dhruim a Charn to give The Rhythym which adds a little bit to an already brilliant problem! His party also added a few new problems in Glen Sannox: a technical wall problem on the front of the scooped project boulder which was Technical Merit and on the Great White boulder the south east arête that arches over the burn - an amazing feature that required some cleaning but yielded some brilliant moves up slopey lip holds to a crux mantle onto the steep slab: Jacks Little Brother 6c. At Cummingston Callum added a crimpy wall problem on the section between Batty Bat and The Shield giving; Attack Attack 6c. At Cullen Caves he completed a full low traverse of the sports wall giving To The Sea! 7a, a technical pumpy traverse.

Back in June, Chris Miele and friends added a tricky line at Glen Lednock: The Hurde (6c/7a) - the left arete of the kist boulder from sitting at a low crimp and high block. 03/06/13 - Chris Miele

In Glen Croe, Fraser McIlwraith added 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a Bieber' (7a+), a dyno from standing off a small crimp rail to lip, just right of The Nuclear Button. 04/05/13 - Fraser McIlwraith

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...

Timeline Walks of Scotland #Hallaig to Screapadal on Raasay

'Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig ...' Hallaig - the lost village of Raasay - is a powerful place. Arguably, it has become a shibboleth for the soul of Gaelic culture. To visit it, to just be there momentarily and feel the resonance of the place, is to know the fragility of place and home, of how kinship can be shattered and how loss can invade a land. Aptly, Hallaig is now a site of pilgrimage for those who value the universal lessons of history. There are t errible reasons for the loss of Hallaig. Its silent mouths of abandoned shielings, the dumb sheep meandering amongst the ruins, whisper with Sorley MacLean's poetry. The place misses the sounds of day-to-day community, and all around the woods and burns and slopes this tough but rich landscape once made this a hardy paradise under the eastern cliffs of Raasay. Facing east to the dawn and overlooking the peninsula of Applecross and the berry-dark depths of the Inner Sound, the walk to Hallaig leads quietly...

Stone Country

Search This Blog