Bolt Holes and Boulder Books

Ali Coull cranks out another V7...Boltsheugh

In a winter such as this, more an extended wet autumn, sunny days have been at a premium, but the NE bags the best of the rain shadow days and glorious sunshine on dry rock is a strong lure away from the dreich overhangs of Dumby... a couple of phone calls from an A90 layby and I found myself basking in the sheltered sunny rock bays of Boltsheugh at Newtonhill. Always a good local bolt-hole and training ground, the sports walls are now more regularly bouldered, including the excellent eliminate traverses and straight-ups... Guy Robertson was quick to point out the many 'illegal' holds I was using, but hell, I didn't mind, it was dry, the sun sank slowly like a lost flare and my eyes hurt to look at it all, no wonder really...

Updates on the next Stone Country books: Stone Play - a global collection of bouldering writing and photography - should be out in May, just finalising a few last articles and photos, then it's off to Italy for the giant digital loo-roll treatment that is modern printing... you remember Bagpuss and the mice who ran the chocolate biscuit factory that so confounded Professor Yaffle...? it's a bit like that, but books come out and the mice are Italian and eat Salsiccia.

A boulder in the NW...

End of the year should see the first Stone Country Companion, which will really be a new edition of the Stone Country book in disguise. It will be a stuffed companion to the best bouldering in Scotland, full colour, with over 100 venues in preparation, many of them entirely new (despite the claims of wizened veterans that they did it years ago in wellies!!), and some very surprising rock formations to boot... it's again an exercise in showing what Scotland has to offer the boulderer apart from midges and bad weather: I'll only be placing in the top problems in each area, as to be completist would be absurd. It's more a dedicated reference for the keen boulderer, with photo-topos, maps etc. explaining classic and new venues, but still giving clues and pointers to unclimbed lines and areas... in conjunction fuller topos and updates will be available online at the website.

Should be a breeze...

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...

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...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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