Fontainebleau Notes

Fontainebleau in October. It's like Christmas morning for boulderers, stepping out of the hire car and running into a pile of rocky presents and tinsel leaves under a pine tree. You get the idea. And despite the barricades and strikes and French indignation at the 'retraites', we made it there and back again. Arriving at Potala's ochre rocks in perfect autumnal stillness was, in Colin's words, 'as good as it gets'. Then the fun began...

The actual physical and debilitating ache of climbing every day in Fontainebleau for nearly 10 days has tramsformed into a nolstalgic ache (and lingering tendinitis!), but it was magical to have clear cool blue skies and crisp conditions to hand every day. Resting consisted of working through blue and orange circuits as it would have been criminal not to climb. Blistered pinkies from the sand at Cul de Chien led to customised rock shoes with flaps which allowed a day at Cuvier on some harder lines, but the Joker still spat me off with a perennial disdain.

To be honest, in such good conditions, it was more fun just traipsing through the forest getting away from the crowds and finding lonesome boulders with stunning lines, or just working my way through the circuits. The forest was truly at its best and walking in the footsteps of Denecourt, Millet and Stevenson only added to the mystique. There's much more to Fontainebleau than just the climbing...

Ban Lieu Nord 7a

La Vie D'Ange, Cuvier 7a

Le Surplomb Allayaud, Jean des Vignes - surely 7a!!!

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...

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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