January 6th-12th - a settling

...not Scotland, as was promised!

Towards the end of the week, the weather has settled a little and some clear skies and frosts set in. A massive coronal mass ejection (CME or solar storm) was predicted to hit the atmosphere on Thursday, but it was weaker than predicted and evening jaunts to the higher ground round Glasgow were fruitless. Iceland and Norway stole the show, seen live on Skygazing live on the BBC, or the 'lucky-bastards show' as it should be called. Hopefully an active sun will continue to have colourful hissy fits this winter...

The clearer skies finally combined with a weekend, so on Saturday 11th, with the east of the country draped with medallions on the forecast, Colin and myself headed to Glen Lednock. Treacherous black ice on the pass over to Comrie (with a buckled jeep in a ditch behind a scribble of swerve-lines on the road) led to a slow approach but we made it up to Invergeldie Farm and stomped the locked-gate approach to the dam for the first enjoyable bouldering session of the year.

The rock was still a little green and the top-outs coated in spindrift snow, but some stiff-fingered bouldering could still be enjoyed. A fine outlook and good venue, with Creag Iochdair on the east flank looking like it should really be developed more. Good to see another party arrive and brave the icy conditions - if the access to the dam car-parks were resurrected, this would be a popular venue, but an unenlightened and regressive landowning approach seems to be a thorn-in-the-side here. But Scottish law and access rights will prevail...

Glen Lednock bouldering

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...

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...

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...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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