Shelterstone Circuit

This topo is a rough guide to good safe problems up to about V3 on the Knoll boulders underneath the Shelterstone. Please let me know of any other problems you might do or know of that are worthy, or any harder problems that have been done above about British 6a. Lots of problems have been done here and it would be good to get a consensus of the best circuit and best 'off-piste' lines, some of which lurk in the great jumble above the Knoll.

1. Easy arete on reddish granite.
2. Overhanging groove, moving left on higher jugs.
3. Short slab direct.
4. Bigger slab to the right, straight up.
5. Cube-shape boulder arete. Jump to start.
6. Right arete of the diagonal crack boulder.
7. Tiptoe r-l along the diagonal crack then reach high for jugs in centre of wall.
8. Overhanging groove.
9. Right side of sharp arete.
10. Lip traverse l-r of curved boulder.
11. Easy large slab left to right arete above small howff.
12. Short wall on pink crimps.
13. Lip traverse R-L.
14. Traverse crack from R-L.
15. The right hand side of the Nose.
16. The left hand side of the Nose.
17. Crack and arete.

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...

Cobbled Together

The south peak ('Jean') on The Cobbler, 12th December 2015 Here's an interesting round-song of place-names for Arrochar, in cartullaries and statistical and printed records since 1395: Arrochar/Arochar/Arrochquhair/Arrochquhare/Arroquhar/Arachar/An Tairbeart Iar/An t-Àra ... I was walking uphill wondering what sticks, what's in a name, why do they change, does the landscape care, who are the caretakers of a place-name? We might just be flecks of mica flashing briefly on a sun-struck pebble in the streams, but names are important to us in our brief mappings of our landscapes. Our human territories are marked by names, sign-postings, marker boulders, paths and cairns, amongst other structures, both textual and physical. 'The Cobbler' mountain - Arrochar's finest and most distinctive peak - is a curious example of the fluidity of naming the landscape; of confusion, habit, fashion, politics, class, and misinformation. The confusion starts even w...

Corncrake in a bird bath, I know, I know, it's serious

Stone Country Press' photostream on Flickr. Apologies to The Smiths fans but I was surprised as anyone... I was wandering through an Iona patio garden to discover the rather intimate mating display of two adult corncrakes. The female was busy bathing in a BandQ water feature, happily ignoring me and the male corncrake below who was busy doing his 'copperwing shuffle'. His efforts became more and more insistent as he strutted manfully around his arena of white pebbles while she watched disdainfully. Finally, after a few rinses, she deigned to come down to watch him close up as he showed off his rather fetching ochre tuxedo. I was invisible in the shadows, or just deemed unimportant, and I watched for five minutes before they retired to the privacy of the long grass of a nearby field. The corncrake may be one of the rarest and most secretive birds in the UK, and I had an internal whispered monologue going round in my head from David Attenborough about how lucky we were ...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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