Stone Country 'Bouldering in Scotland' news

I've been meaning to build a website of Scottish bouldering for ages, but it's a hell of a job and Scottish Climbs has a lot of stuff anyway and many people have their own blogs and sites which prove useful for the wandering boulderer in Scotland.

Nevertheless, I've opened a Google Bouldering in Scotland site where I'm putting draft topos and updates for the forthcoming updated editions of the Bouldering in Scotland printed guides. As time goes by, I'll add more videos, topos, maps and photos to complement the print guides. We're looking for area authors for the three new guides: Central & South/Central Highlands/Northwest Highlands, so please get in touch if you want to feature your hard-earned expertise on the blocs - there are a lot of folk who have put so much time and effort into their bouldering and Stone Country is a community publishing press!

Each area will be based on an accessible 'day-run' radius, including the islands closest to mainland ferry ports (eg. Arran will be in Central & South, Mull in Central Highlands) and the guides will be see a complete design overhaul. They'll feature photos from local photographers and activists, complete problem listings, photo topos, all-new maps and access notes, and of course, hundreds of new stones and venues developed since the gazetteer edition of 2008. Areas which feature new and exciting problems include: Torridon, Sheigra, Reiff, Aberdeen sea-cliffs, Glen Nevis, Galloway, Strathconon, Laggan, Trossachs, Dumbarton (of course), Shelterstone, Arran and a lot more!

The topos on the new site are free to download but are copyright of their authors, so please use them for personal use only. In many cases they require significant updates, so if you want to get in touch to tell us what you've done, please do so!

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

Search This Blog