Wanted - Climbing Memories

In a bid to liven up a new series of sport and bouldering guides, I'm looking for curious memories/histories of climbing at Scottish venues. They're just 100 word stories about humorous incidents or weird happenings, or memories of other climbers and people you met.

I'm willing to give a page of each major venue in the guides to these snapshots with free copies of the guide to all those who are published, so treat it like a Cornflakes packet competition... in a hundred words or less...!

Stories that are exclusive and haven't appeared elsewhere would be welcome, just keep it light and humorous, with a bit of local colour to highlight the mood of the venue. Dumbarton would be a good place, for example, as so much 'happens' there, but remote and obscure venues are fine, wherever your memory is stirred!

The new guides should be publsihed in batches over the next year, covering all sporting venues and more comprehensive bouldering gen than is in the main guide 'Bouldering in Scotland'.

I just thought we all take it too seriously sometimes and it would be good to make the guides entertaining as well as informative, after all the best thing about climbing is telling the story in the pub afterwards.

Just email anything to me here.

Showing the locals how to drrink beer at Dumby didn't work out well for Ross...

A Crow Dictionary

A Crow Dictionary Feannag – black asterisk of the sky, fitheach – a quartz-glinting raven’s eye, starrag – the hoodie prowling the shore, cathag – the sea-eyed jackdaw, cnàmhach – blood-billed chough of the machair, pioghaid – chuckling, piebald joker, ròcas – the belfry’s raucous rook, garagg – what the carrion bird took, sgreuchan-coille – my own oak-guide jay, we look to each to show us the way. In their very names the Scottish hills call out the dwelling place of birds. A toponymical survey of most Scottish mountain ranges or lochs reveals the legacy of Scotland’s familiar montane birds. Around Loch Lomond and its parent hill we have: Meall an t-Seabhaig (mound of the peregrine), Creag na h Iolaire (rock of the eagle), the high stony Ptarmigan Ridge on Ben Lomond, or Coire na Baintighearna (corrie of the mountain linnets). By far the most common toponym is for crags and hills named after the ubiquitous mo...

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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