Some spring boulders

Along with the spring flowers, it seems quite a few new boulders have sprouted with the better weather.

Nic Ward found some fine new Torridonian rock above the Sanctary cave at the Applecross bealach boulders, with a classic line:

Don't Mess with the Shek 7a/+

Pull on using the right arete and a small undercut in the middle of the face. Aim for the obvious sidepull above. Then a tricky move to a couple of jugs, which offer some respite, before a long reach to small holds and finally the top. Awesome!

Colintraive in Cowal hides some good boulders on the old road by the shore north of the village. About halfway along this road there is this giant, needs a little clean but some good looking beefy roof problems:

I had forgotten what a fine little venue Loch nan Uamh is. In baking Easter sunshine, it felt magical climbing over the peppermint waters on the rough feldspar'd schist, or smearing up the wave washed slabs...perfect therapy for a climber back to basics after a year of injury!

And a visit to Gigha will lead you naturally to the highest point of Creag Bhan at 100m and some fine leaning rock and slabs on the other side:

Richie Betts seems to have followed a tip off and found some awesome rock in Lewis in the wilds not far from Mealaval I think...

And a meet soon on Arran will reveal the whereabouts of these beauties:

And Dave the Mac seems to have found some few hundred new boulders, check out his blog!

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...

Cobbled Together

The south peak ('Jean') on The Cobbler, 12th December 2015 Here's an interesting round-song of place-names for Arrochar, in cartullaries and statistical and printed records since 1395: Arrochar/Arochar/Arrochquhair/Arrochquhare/Arroquhar/Arachar/An Tairbeart Iar/An t-Àra ... I was walking uphill wondering what sticks, what's in a name, why do they change, does the landscape care, who are the caretakers of a place-name? We might just be flecks of mica flashing briefly on a sun-struck pebble in the streams, but names are important to us in our brief mappings of our landscapes. Our human territories are marked by names, sign-postings, marker boulders, paths and cairns, amongst other structures, both textual and physical. 'The Cobbler' mountain - Arrochar's finest and most distinctive peak - is a curious example of the fluidity of naming the landscape; of confusion, habit, fashion, politics, class, and misinformation. The confusion starts even w...

Ben Lomond - a Gaelic palette

Loch Lomond, Wednesday 28th December 2016 Mist, water and silvery light: a very Gaelic palette in midwinter between the storms, which these days all have names - we've been through Barbara's tantrums and Conor's backlash, but today was one of those steamed-up car sort of days. Warmish air from the southwest is rolling about Loch Lomond and gathering a chill as it picks up speed towards the snow-patched summit, so I take the clockwise 'wind with my back' option, steeply up the Ptarmigan ridge from Rowardennan, hearing a chuckle in the mist which is either a red grouse or the eponymous bird. Each landmark on the map is a clue to the Gaelic landscape - Tom Fhithich I think may be the raven's beak-nosed boulder or crag half up towards the knoll of Ptarmigan, which just breaks the mist, and assumes the role of target summit for the meantime as the main peak is in cloud. The small hidden tarns are full of slushy grey ice and the 'yellow bealach' is a...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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