Lost Islands and Rumour Stones

Gigha Beaches

Torrential late April rains finally have given way to some blazing blue skies in the west. I've been out on foot in the Highlands and Islands for the last wee while due to a clutchless car but finally motoring again and visiting some corners of Scotland for the Book of Lost Stones, as well as bolting some new lines on our local crag at Dunglass, removing the rusted tat of old and adding a few shiny new bolts.

The New: new bolts for Beef Monsters

The Old: Political Legacy lower off

Keeping up the sport climbing as the weather settles into summer mode will hopefully mean a strong start on the trad climbing over the summer, with some big walls tagged for photography and Guy Robertson's magnum opus on sharp-end Scottish climbs. I'm also keen to get my backside onto some long-desired climbs such as Ling Dynasty, Titan's Wall, Expecting to Fly, New Testament and Clearances...hopefully we'll get the summer for good strong photography as well as some actual climbing!

Gigha Rock

The Island of Gigha is one of those forgotten Scottish islands, a short ferry journey from Kintyre and completely community-owned. We see the same salty faces each year and the locals are all either chasing lost dogs, fish-farming, hunting gulls' eggs or standing at the hotel bar talking about boats. Over two days we walked its 20 mile coastline in search of serendipity and a little climbing. I always thought the island might have steep rock and so it proved, with a super highball central wall below the little Trig point summit of Creag Bhan (101 feet!). This is one to return to, as is the boulder strewn Garbh Eilean in the north. The island of Cara off the south end has some trad and bouldering possibilities, but requires a boat or a friendly fisherman's favour. The wee north peninsula connected by the Eilean Garbh 'twin beaches' has a terrific steep crag and large boulders on its south side.

Eilean Garbh - the Raven Stone

Rumours of some 7c boulder problems around Tarbert were mentioned to me by Iain Blades, but no clues as yet, are you out there Iain? The crags above the harbour look like they may have some steep lines, but we drove past. I'm sure there is scope for a lot more in this area and down Kintyre, but how much is rumour and how much reality?

Seaweed Painting

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...

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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