'Elements' & Bouldering in Scotland

They're nearly here! Both the new Bouldering in Scotland guide and the bouldering film 'Elements' will be available a little later in March. As a special prepub offer, the book and DVD are available for £30 plus p&p... that's a good offer folks, so if you want to buy both, you can do so securely through the Paypal buttons on the blog or on the film page on www.stonecountry.co.uk where you can also view a trailer of the movie.

Pete Murray spent six months putting this film together, enduring some very elemental days with the camera, oblivious to crashing waves, snow, brass-monkey frosts, melting microphones, howling gales and endlessly failing boulderers (well, some of us!).

What's the film about? Pete says:

“elements” is a rock climbing film like no other, the four chapters – Water, Earth, Air and Fire – are linked with a narrative from the ecologist and land rights activist, Alistair McIntosh, whose thoughts on faerie magic and the human spirit fix a connection between Scotland’s ancient history and the boulderer’s search for perfect movement on rock.

It's the first DVD devoted entirely to bouldering in Scotland. Filmed over six months in late 2007 and early 2008, it features dozens of ascents in new venues from all four corners of the country – including the first ascent of the hardest new boulder problem so far this year, captured on the final day’s filming! With music by new Glasgow band, Frightened Rabbit, “elements” is released in Spring 2008, to coincide with the publication of “The Stone Country Guide to Bouldering in Scotland".

There will be a launch at Cotswolds on Thursday 27th march at 7pm, free entry to view the film and a lot of free wine!

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...

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...

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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