Driest September 2014

September has brought crisp dry weather unprecedented in Scotland in recent years, with opportunities for walking, climbing and cycling in fine dry conditions. It has felt almost continental in the sense of blithely venturing out any day, or at least being able to rely on the weather setting fair to coincide with your time off.

Mark Garthwaite took advantage and subdued the mighty Dalriada on the Cobbler with a sports-style pre-placed gear ascent (perhaps an opportunist methodology best for our weather), on the notoriously unreadable scooped schist of the Cobbler. Fraser Harle was on hand to take some stunning and inspiring shots of this modern classic rock route, check his photos here >>>

Dan Varian amongst others has been exploring the tidal reaches of the Solway to add a new, as yet unreleased, venue on this pleasant and sunny coast. Sea-washed rocks and eliminating foothold limpets seem to be the character of these coves, topos to follow shortly.

Tom Charles-Edwards is back climbing and he prefers big lines and stones over the 600m contour, discovering king lines for anyone who can show the legs to get there, if you are brave enough to camp out high in the boulderfields amongst the rutting stags that sound like Minotaurs hunting for you when you're in a tent! John Watson continued his plus-800m exploration of granite Arran tors and fought losing shoes and chalk-bags to the winds now presaging the changes of October.

Alex Gorham and friends developed some big stones in Crianlarich, again around the 600m contour and despite the long walk-in, these stones are some of the best in Britain but are unlikely to get much traffic due to the remoteness, a story many stones in Scotland are happy to tell...

The Ayrshire Coast has also unearthed some steep cave bouldering, with fine weather, low tides and a west wind needed to maximise conditions.

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

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