Cairngorm Potential...

There's a great Dylan Moran gag about 'potential' - leave it alone, don't mess with it, that's what it is - Potential! You start screwing with it, you're likely to ruin it all...

which is how I feel about my bouldering sometimes - lots of energy and plans and optimism - the reality is a little trickier. Take the Shelterstone, for example, a tremendous mountain crag, (The Needle, Steeple...) you go here for these classic routes and the beauty of howffing in the Loch Avon basin, but who considers the bouldering? Most people who have climbed here have bouldered on the litter of giants beneath the crag - Julian Lines has done a pile of problems, Gary Latter etc. - a lot of climbers have quietly bouldered here a little when visiting to climb the bigger routes. I'm sure Robin Smith even warmed up on a few aretes.

But in terms of pure bouldering? Very few bother, what with the walk-in - a three hour trek, especially with boulder mat - and you most definitely don't want to tear ligaments or worse in this corrie - it's a LONG crawl out and don't expect your mobile to help you out - it will be good for playing golf or pinball on till the batteries run out, that's all.

But there is potential, and lots of it. There's an excellent circuit of safe problems up to Brit 5c on the boulders on the grassy knoll below the main scree - I'll post a topo soon for this. There are also some choice Brit 6a and 6b problems on the steeper walls, again with reasonably safe grassy or boggy landings, but there are some well-hidden roofs and almighty prows to be climbed by, yes, you guessed it, those with potential!

If you are planning a bouldering trip here, there is no need for a tent. Take a warm sleeping bag stuffed in your mat, as there are loads of howffs - it's like a stony version of Hobbiton for God's sake! Take a stove and something good to eat, and a quarter of your favourite hooch to sip on the excellent beaches by the Loch. The midges are not west-coast style and there's usually a breeze. To get there? Take a map and compass in case... park at the the ski centre, walk along the excellent track into Coire an t' Sneachda, over the 'goat track' under the cliffs and straight across the grassy plateau and down the steep Coire Domhain past Hell's Lum crag- you'll see the boulders ahead on the perfect grassy knoll, below the giant boulder that is the eponymous 'Shelterstone', though there are plenty of contenders for this name! Find a nice spot to howff, then go bouldering... the circuit problems all have tell-tale pink wear on the crucial holds. Classics include the diagonal tip-toe crack on the 'Stream' boulder, the crack by the 'Pool' boulder and various flying aretes... I'll post some photos end of the summer.

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...

Scotland's Iconic Mountains #Broad Law

BROAD LAW The rolling hills east of the modern motorway of the M74 hold much more character and history than they appear from the west, where they are now flanked by forestries of spruce and wind-farms. In medieval times this was a Scottish royal hunting ground – the ‘Ettrick Forest’. Further east towards the Tweed valley, there are echoes of a deeper Scottish history in the border towns of Hawick, Selkirk, Galashiels, Peebles and Kelso, all on the banks of the historic River Tweed and famous for their medieval forts and abbeys. Looking west from Broad Law to the monoculture forestry and wind-farms of 21st C Scotland This range of hills, along with the northern flanks of the Cheviot hills, marks the geographical transition to the once-contested border with Northumberland, with its high pass over Carter Bar on the A68. The more useful sense of boundaries are suggested not by the roads but by the watersheds: to the north the waters drain into the River Cly...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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