Craigmaddie in wellies

The Plinth, Craigmaddie, Font 6c+

A perfect morning at Craigmaddie on Thursday 12th as the weather finally settles and the blue skies return. Warmed up on the lower roof lip traverse, trying not to slip off into the boggy gunk below. Then settled on the first 6c of the season, 'The Plinth' left hand version. It starts off the plinth, using the big block underneath for the feet, slap up the crimps on the shield, then a crux throw left for the sloper leads to a tricky one foot smear as you stare at the slopey ledge hold for the right hand. Not over yet, an easy-to-fail snatch for the top - a super problem and under-rated - feeling harder as the sandstone is still bleeding a little winter damp and my right hand kept flipping off.

Millstone circle or gnomon? What does the 'H' mean?

Reading up on Craigmaddie Muir, it has some interesting hidden history. Not only is there evidence of Neolithic and Bronze/Iron Age tombs and settlement, this is all confused by an overlay of millstone quarrying. I found some interesting symbols under the big roof, mason marks of all sorts, next to the names A. Cairns and J.Neilson and an unfinished 18** date inscribed on the rock. Must check Bardowie cemeteries for masons...

Cogwheel pits

On the plateau are dozens of quarried 'cogwheel' pits distinctive of millstone quarrying. Holes would have been flooded with water and wooden splints inserted under the semi-carved stones. The water would swell the wooden wedges and snap off fully-formed millstones. The quarriers also had a mischievous bent, as there are 'fairy' carvings all over the place, including an Egyptian-style 'eye', a gnomon circle (or millstone peck-tracing), mason marks, names, mysterious 'H' marks, faces on the Auld Wives Lifts (and lots of Victorian graffiti), and even a 'fairy footprint' in the rock, a bit like the King's Footprint at Dunadd, but obviously moulded on a size 6 welly boot... or perhaps this was the ancient seat of a lost kingdom? I still haven't found the reputed serpent carved in a plinth and reported in an old archaeological survey.

Fairy welly print...

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...

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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