Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

  First of all, having a couple of 'refreshing pints' in the Strontian Inn was a bad idea . . . the hottest day of the year at the fag-end of July, the tarmac bubbling, it seemed wise at the time. The Bealach Feith Nan Laogh could wait a bit. I checked the specs of the climb, which seemed less electrically-shocking at a pub picnic table in the sun: 2.6 km with an average gradient of 11.8% . . .  steep, but no killer, I reasoned. Something at the back of my head crawled and writhed, trying to fathom what higher gradient would average it to 11.8! I clipped into the bike and set off, my mind a fuzzy blank of summer bliss. Turning north off the main road at Strontian towards innocuous-looking hills, the wooded first few kilometres are flat and surfaced with new rolling tarmac, I was in a pleasant dream of cycling paradise, spinning without a chain, listening to birdsong, still on the big ring. A small sign turned me left up a short wooded hill towards 'Pollochro ...

The maritime sliver of schist and quartzite that is the Isle of Gigha is an island of two coasts: a sheltered riviera of sandy bays on the east and a weathered and hardened west coast facing the Atlantic between Kintyre and the Oa of Islay. The central ridge of the island is wooded on the lee side and shelters most of the community around the hub of Ardminish and the old wooded Achamore. For climbers, the best trail is the west coast from the south pier to the summit of Creag Bhan, which is a day-long walk between ferries with some good climbing and bouldering, largely underdeveloped. The northern island of Eilean Garbh has some steep crags for sport-heads and a remarkable tombolo beach, polluted to hell with plastic on the drift side but postcard-perfect on the lee side. Walk up from the pier to the village shop at Ardminish, turn left and south past the hotel to the south of the island, past Achamore gardens and Gigha windfarm - the ‘dancing ladies’, four windmills as of 2...

‘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...

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The most debebilitating illness for any climber aside from the obvious broken bones, death and torn tendons, is viral labyrinthitis, an inner ear vertigo which is like stepping off a kids' roundabout and the feeling sticks. For weeks. A recuperative bout of doing nothing on a non-climbing island seemed appropriate until I grew so frustrated with inactivity I wobbled out of bed and set about the island like a lunchtime drunk looking for a pub. Gigha is a pretty island of meadows and rippled beaches, but it has little rock above chin height, and if it were a PC it would be a 250mb laptop from the 90s, in climbing bittage. However, it is not quite devoid of bouldering algorithms: the craggy trig point Marilyn of Craig Bhan has some white amphibolite slabs and the easy track up to the modest summit leads to some intricate and technical slabs and cracked grooves. An hour of rehabilitating wobbles on these slabs with friends spotting with big mats is the perfect antidote for stepping o...

Craigmaddie, the 'Northumberland in Glasgow' venue, really comes into its own in summer. Its rough sandstone is grippy and dries out nicely, leaving some of the damper winter roofs open for new lip traverses and deep cave starts. Colin Lambton, 'king of the lip traverse' and John Watson, unlocked the 'Stellar Adventure' lip traverse of the Sheep Pen left roof, which has brushed up well to give a classic outing...

Top effort from Alex Gorham against the dank, the green, the midge and the hell of Scottish bouldering! The building should give you a clue if you are a Celtic fan...

Well it all looks spanking new and freshly minted rock as it first was... and the lads are doing a good job to be careful with holds and 'historical' graffiti after advice from climbers. As for the climbing I think there may be a short window while it feels grittier, but no doubt shoe resin and chalk and weather, and budding Banksies, will see it back to good ol' Dumby glass. Remember no climbing this week until after 5pm to let the guys finish their work. Toto at Dumby from John Watson on Vimeo .

Just to let everyone know that Historic Scotland, who own the boulders and crag at Dumbarton Rock, have agreed to clean the boulders of graffiti, overseen by climbers so no holds are damaged. After excellent concern for our sporting heritage and good consultancy (thanks to Ian Lambie of Historic Scotland and Andrea Partridge at the MCOS!), I'll be attending the first day of cleaning on Monday 11th March. I would like to ask climbers and boulderers to avoid climbing here in this period while the cleaning goes on, as for safety reasons parts of the crag and boulders will have to be cordoned off. I would ask all to respect the arrangements we've made on behalf of climbers, as much good work has gone on in the background to arrange the best form of cleaning and restoration. Unfortunately much of the 'historic' graffiti has vanished behind modern graffiti, so it's impossible to restore the lower 'layers' - it will all just have to come off. This is a good o...

Mark Dobson on Jamie's Overhang Left 6b -  a forgotten belter The boulders at Craigmore are tiny, the crag routes only a few metres. It is a place for locals only, for top-roping, not meant to be seen as anything other than diversionary. Travelling rock-rats shrug and do a couple of the over-starred routes on top-route, maybe pull a few of the more obvious problems and leave, thinking it a heap of dank green esoterica best left to, yes, you guessed it - the locals. That's all fine with me and I'm not going to praise it to the skies and rate it as Scotland's last hidden secret - it's not. It's a north-facing crag. That usually keeps the crowds away. Everything bad about it is obvious on arrival, mostly: it's boggy, muddy, vegetated, slimy, midgy, repetitive, confusing, dark, chilly, always condition-dependent. Most happily affirm it is deservedly forgotten and overshadowed by its big neighbour at Dumbarton. But I love forgotten places and I go there...

A week on the Ross of Mull. A high pressure settling over Scotland in February. Sunshine and pink granite... iron and stone. The week is a lesson in learning how not to shred yourself on large quartz and feldspar crystals, learning what can and cannot be climbed; the subtle differences between a blank wall and a smearable slab...  Danny's Wall Fionnphort If you turn left off the ferry at Craignure on Mull, you’re heading west along a gradually ageing sequence of geologies, through the tertiary gabbro lavas of Glen More to the earlier basal lavas at Pennyghael and the older still Caledonian schists of Bunessan and beyond. Then it all goes pink-panther and you hit a very old and colourful granite around 413 million years old, lavishly outcropping around the ferry port of Fionnphort, like so many bald monk-heads poking out of the machair and turf, occasionally sunburnt to a deeper red. Then it gets all historical on the ferry to Iona and its ancient Lewisian bedrock ...

This unremarkable and indistinct bump of moss is remarkable for its surroundings rather than the character of its summit. The more satisfying ascent (if not climbing Meall Corranach) starts from the Roro bridge in Glen Lyon, a few km east of Bridge of Balgie, with the recommended circuit going up the east glen and a grassy descent down to the west glen. Glen Lyon Park at the Roro bridge testing station and swing round the road to a T-junction, heading left towards Roromore. Just before the fence at the Allt a' Chobhair, follow the burn uphill by a fence through more interesting scenery than the farm track across the river. It leads past some glacial boulders to the old shieling village under Coire Ban's scree slopes. Follow the wall uphill to the Coire and either strike up left steeply, or follow the fence right to the blunt ridge of Sron Eich. A gradually easing angle leads south to the summit plateau of Meall a Choire Leith, which I think is named after the adjacent ...

Gaz Marshall has completed his topo for Laggan, which is one of the better Central Highland venues and has featured regularly on Gaz's blog Soft Rock . Strongbow is must-do problem and worth visiting just on its own: 'Two jumbles of schist boulders, one North and one South of the village, have been found and developed by local Aviemorons. This is a guide to current developments; Creagan Soillier, aka Laggan 1, North of the village, and Creag Bhuidhe, aka Laggan 2, to the South...' More details on the Laggan page... thanks Gaz!

In my palm, I roll around three small stones taken from the waters. One is a blue schist pebble, slightly chipped, another a perfect egg of sandstone conglomerate and the last a pink and white granite sphere. When I force my brain onto the rack of geological time, exploding it out into a thousand ‘civilizations’ or so (my attempt at imagining a million years), then multiply this by, say, 50, I just about get an idea of each stone’s provenance. I feel I am rolling around three small planets in untouchable orbits; three lost worlds of breathtaking beauty, shape and form; elegant worlds which have been crushed, eroded, rolled into one another and, briefly, given this current page of a pop-up book: there you go, this is your planet for now; turn the page another million years and another world pops up. Stones are border guards of the unknown and secretive territories; bureaucratic knots in our states of understanding deep time . . . ...for the full article, visit the E-books page

Anyone who has taken the sea road of the Eilean Siar (Western Isles), or skirted the high edges of Caithness and Sutherland, or meandered the archipelagos of Shetland and Orkney, will have noted a peculiar structure, often wore down to its foundational stump like an old tooth - the 'broch'. These blind eyeless towers once stood proud of the landscape on our northern Celtic coastlines (the tallest remaining is the Mousa Broch of Shetland), from around 300 BC through the Iron Age until they were either 'inherited' by invading Vikings and occupied until around AD 1300, or 'unquarried' for walls and other structures. It was the vikings who have given us their modern name from 'Borg' meaning 'fortification', though what they were called by their original architects swims in the deep Celtic well of lost tongues. It is unlikely, however, they were originally built in response to insecurity. Their frequency, such as in the northern peninsulas of Skye...

Andrew Finlayson, the producer behind One Tree Island Publishing, has brought out a lavish new guide to the standing stones of Strathearn. This fertile and secluded land, situated in the Earn valley between Perth all the way up its headwaters of Lochearn at St. Fillans, is home to some of Scotland's earliest monoliths, cup-marked rocks and stone circles. These distant echoes of a neolithic society still have a resonance to them, a tangible sense of place, and Andrew has produced this superbly illustrated gazetteer to  the history and provenance of these stones.  This convenient ring-bound book acts as both a guide to each site and a detailed history to its neolithic society, engineering, farming, astronomy and symbology. He details each stone meticulously and with  fine technical drawings and colour photography, including more famous monoliths such as the Sma Glen's  Ossian's Stone,  as well as 'quieter' but astronomically important stones such as  Tully...