New Guide to Arrochar and Cowal

The new Blocsport Guide to Arrochar and Cowal is now available as a 16 page full colour PDF download for only 3.50. It is a guide to the best bouldering and sport climbing between Arrochar and the Cowal peninsula. It is a precursor chapter to the new area guides from Stone Country, so if you purchase a copy of the PDF please let us know if there are additions or inaccuracies and we'll correct for the print issues. Also, we are seeking photographs for the new print guides, so if you have any good sample jpegs send them through and we'll consider for inclusion (free guide if you are included).

The contents list goes as follows:

1. Ardvorlich Sports Crags including Hidden Walls & Quarterdome

2. Loch Sloy Blocs

3. The Narnain Boulders

4. Glen Croe Blocs

5. Kennedy Boulder

6. Coilessan Blocs and projects

7. Glen Kinglas , the Restil boulders and the Butterbridge Bloc

8. The Anvil Sport Climbs!!

9. Tighnabruaich Sport Climbs at the Viewpoint crags

10. Glen Massan House Bloc and Miracle Wall sport near Dunoon

Remember, select the highest quality option on your printer, use good paper and select the 'Print as Booklet' option - this will print the guide as a handy A5 portrait booklet which you can staple.

Enjoy your climbing and I look forward to some feedback on new routes and problems!

Sample pages:

Open publication - Free publishing - More scotland

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...

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...

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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