Northwest New Year

A week in Ullapool over New Year saw us staring out of rain-lashed sash windows, or sqeezing blustery walks in between painful hail showers. Constant winds had brought up an impressive surf at the normally placid Achnahaird.

I even tried to crank out the aptly named Clach Mheallain (Gaelic for 'hailstones') at Reiff in the Woods, racing to get myshoes on before the approaching storm, but fingers grew too numb and my boulder mat flipped over in my face - game over! a few boggy trots hunting down boulders led to one entertaining cleaning session in a full-on rain storm, which was like scrubbing a filthy land-rover in a jet-wash.

Rogie Falls in spate

A week of storms throughout the country has led to the most saturated ground I've seen in Scotland, rock didn't stand a chance of drying in the bitter winds. We retired to the Ullapool Bouldering Wall, trying hard not to pull down Ian's carefully constructed training boards after too many pints and pies.

Corrieshalloch Gorge was the most impressive feature, in full flow and pretending (bar a few tens of degrees) to be something out of a tropical Jurassic period...

So on to 2012, we are due a high pressure or two and dare I say it, I am sick of the sight of the TCA!

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

Search This Blog