Skip to main content

Cammachmore - New Aberdeen bouldering



Having been partly developed by Tim Rankin but unreported, over the summer Tom Kirkpatrick has further developed this schist bouldering venue. It has larger boulders than Portlethen, meaning some highball finishes and problematic landings, as well as some deep-water soloing possibilities, but the best problems are safe and on good rock and there are some satisfying traverses. Tom will put a topo on the wiki at www.scottishclimbs.com


Tom's description:

Cammachmore Bay Bouldering

Chilled out bouldering venue, just south of Craigmaroinn. The Bay gets all the sun going and nesting puffins can be seen on the cliffs above and seals and porpoises in the water below. The climbing is on a variety of large and small blocs and walls on beautiful water washed schist. A good spread of grades is available. The only draw back is that mats and good spotters are definitely required.

The boulders can be approached in two ways. At very low tide by heading straight down the path towards the sea from the turning area at Downies, turning left at first col on the ridge to Gorillas Head, heading toward obvious ‘yellow headed’ boulder, then walking round the bay past The Dark Side boulders to the main area. If not possible then follow costal path north briefly before heading straight down vague path in the centre of headwall of bay. Time 3-5 mins.

Popular posts from this blog

Beinn Dòrain

           Viaduct and Beinn Dorain Once you cross the bealach under Beinn Odhar north of Tyndrum, the shapely peak of Beinn Dòrain is a visual fanfare to the Highlands. The mountain and its environs are richly detailed in the poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s poem Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (‘In Praise of Beinn Dòrain’). [i] Its symmetrical convexity, deeply gullied flanks like pencil sketch-marks, and stern domed summit, make this a moment to instinctively reach for the camera. It is a steep but invigorating mountain to walk, which is more leisurely explored from its eastern corries, though the traditional ascent from Bridge of Orchy, up to the toothed ‘Am Fiachlach’ ridge quickly brings fine views from the heart of the Central Highlands, encompassing Cruachan in the west to Lawers in the east and the Mamores to the north. If you were set the task to name the features and character of this mountain, before a Gaelic toponymy, you may have come up with a similar voc...

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...

The Metadata of Being Human

Shamanistic zoomorphs, lithic graffiti, hallucinogenic tableaux, territory markings, knife-sharpeners … rock art – l'art rupestre – is so far beyond our traditional 'linguistic' history, it does not have an interpretative alphabet or a single line of confirmed meaning. There are many interpretations of the 'gravures' (carvings) and 'abris ornés' (decorated caves) in the hidden bivouacs throughout the forest of Fontainebleau. The sandstone marks easily under the nib of a hard flint from the deeper calcareous geology and this soft stone canvas has allowed our European ancestors to carve the stylised and modernistic strokes we might note as remarkable in a Picasso painting. Most of the carvings involve complex hash-marks and grids, overlaying each other, occasionally with mandala-like boxes. Sometimes there have been carved astonishingly beautiful anthropomorphs, (stylised human-like figures), or zoomorphs, (deities or humans manifesting in animal form) or argu...