Skip to main content

Sunshine on Lith

The stubborn high pressure system that has been sinking cold air all over Britain has been a rare treat for lithophiles. The rock has been sticky as the sides of a freezer and the boggy approaches in Scotland have been rock hard, allowing an approach in dry trainers, though some comical Billy Elliot moments occurred on great tongues of ice and frosted top-outs.

Ben More Coigach Stone Pavement

I was in the sunny North West over New Year and continued development is apace on the red grit and on some obscure granite boulders. Even interlopers like myself can find projects galore. I enjoyed a session at the excellent Rhue Blocks, managing the crux crouch start to the Forge before falling off on the slab, by which point my skin was too shredded to continue!

Ian Taylor at Reiff in the Woods

In the south Tim Rankin has been busy repeating the harder Thirlstane classics and finally working out how Paul Savage's problems work best. He repeated Tied Up and Swallowed at a 'short-man's' verion of 7b+, mantling up to the crimp with the left hand and standing on the shelf to cross through to the break. Tim has also discovered an exciting cave with 'immaculate rock' and we await summer development!

Sun and Ice

Back in Glasgow, I visited the old quarry venue of Windyhill above Johnstone and found it to be an excellent bouldering wall, catching all the sun going and with grippy orange basalt. Most of the lines are straightforward but eliminating holds makes it a worthwhile work-out, good for a couple of hours strengthening the fingers and honing the footwork.

Labels

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Read more

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...
Read more

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...
Read more