40 days and 40 nights...

...of rain... which has put paid to the Scottish bouldering scene for this year... everything is weeping and green, we need a benevolent high pressure to restore some normality to the bouldering scene, everyone's frustrated by the deluge, and it doesn't look like stopping. Grabbing windows of opportunity between the fronts is the only option and running the animated satellite forecasts is like watching the old broken back of Scotland being whipped by sadistic Atlantic fronts.

That said, I squeezed in a pleasant afternoon at St Bride's wall near Strathyre... a quartzy bulging wall with perfect landings and some good testpieces, just after the parking for the Ben Ledi walk-in. It is not extensive, but in bad weather it is only two minutes walk and facing south, so it's worth a visit when the higher boulders are not worth the risk. It catches the sun and a few hairy-knuckled gestures from passing white-vans, which you can feel free to return.

The main lines are fingery straight-up highballers, but traversing right and descending the quartz crack is more sensible after the rain has greened off the top-outs. Projects remaining include the low traverse (broken holds may have made this harder) and the Bulge direct ... (may be the line climbed by Kev Howett in the 80's 'Grey Matter') - this is a fingery looking nightmare into the 8th grade somewhere... with quartz nubbins and slopers from hell thrown in! I managed to tackle the bulge from the quartz seam side, cranking up a nice crossover sequence on the seam to a high and unhelpful sidepull, where body tension allows the feet to smear on and the sidepull becomes operable. Slapping out right to the said quartz sloper, a moment of insecurity follows before better holds come... an excellent Font 6c+/7a, let me know your thoughts!

Let's hope we are due some higher pressure...

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...

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...

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 – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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