Cave Crag Fun and Games

Nic Duboust on Marlena

During a pumped lull in working the sports routes at Marlena, Mike disappeared off with his shoes in hand seeking something amenable to solo in the rhododendron wilderness. He appeared back an hour later with a 'pretty good' boulder problem project instead. Hard, he said. Okay, I thought, Cave Crag and its environs are not renowned for the generosity of bouldering, but what a little gem! Having eventually refound the problem, his radar having gone astray, Mike pointed out a beautifully scooped groove with two obvious holds on the right and none on the left, sloping ledges and a rounded top-out - the perfect boulder problem: not quite enough but maybe just enough.

'The Project'

Numerous plays later he returned to the sports crag, still psyched but beaten for the day. Adrian Crofton, the bullshitting teuchtar, sent us off on a wild goose chase for a 'nice scooped boulder on a little meadow'. We found a chossy overhang on a bog.

Meanwhile, Nic was cruising up Silk and inexplicably tossing himself off Marlena, still, looking strong and fluid after just having repeated Sufferance the day before. Not to be outdone by the youth, Guy Robertson was cruising up Hamish Teds for warm-ups before despatching Silk Marlena, despite forgetting the sequence at the top and receiving bad beta from the dangling photographer.

Guy Robertson walking on Silk

Second session and the stamina is returning... off to bolt a new Loch Lomond crag today. By Monday we should have a new venue to add to the burgeoning list of sport climbing crags in Scotland, and more to add to the upcoming Stone Country Bloc Sport guides.

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...

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...

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...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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