Pete Murray is back making a few more vids of Scottish climbing and bouldering, this time with the mighty HD camera in tow. We'll be producing a spin-off series of 'How To' films that illustrate the techniques to solve Scotland's top 50 or so boulder problems, 'condensing the story of these classic lines into a simple, concise story which reflects the intensity and brevity of the movement itself' (Pete's words). The HD vid of 'Gorilla' at Dumbarton Rock can be viewed on his Vimeo site.
‘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...