'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!

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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