Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

Claire Youdale bouldering Arran It's been a vigorous period of good conditions and boulderers around Scotland have profited from the dry spell now rapidly coming to a soggy close! On Arran, Claire Youdale finished off the headwall of The Mushroom to give ' Invasive Species ', a true and proper Font 6b+ finish to the Rock Lobster problem which jumped off at the jugs. Now only the big pocket project remains!! In the northwest, Ian Taylor repeated ' The Mission ' and has been beavering at the problems on Ardmair Crag, completing the imaginative ' Ian's Problem ' Font 6c, see the pic. The steeper walls here stay dry in light rain and have some good traverses and natural straight-ups. A topo will follow soon. Ian's Problem, Ardmair In Glen Nevis, Dave MacLeod has continued to develop the Pine Alps boulders, completing the true Bear Trap Prow at Font 8a+, hardest in the glen, Dave? He also did the attractive crack-line to the right of Waterfall arete, a...

Apremont Everyone knows the gravity is heavier in the forest.... I took a research trip to Fontainebleau to 'climb lighter' and collect my thoughts for the next bouldering book, before we launch into a few Scottish trad books from Stone Country Press. The finest quality to bouldering in my opinion is its flexibility and this is well worth exploiting in an area as diverse and huge as Fontainebleau, you can search for varying styles of climbing, even changing them on the same boulder within seconds - should you find your crimping strength is weak but your core tension is good, drop the sharp marble-edged walls and climb into the depths of a slopey roof! Or vice versa... Font is a place of pure experimentation and allows you the luxury of trying your new formulae with no more than the fear that you're popping placebos, it's all in the mind anyway... just move on if nothing happens, that's the philosophy of the forest! Thousands and thousands of these little experiments...

We have a few copies of 'Elements' left and are selling these with the new Bouldering in Scotland Guide for £30, so if anyone wants to take advantage, please look at the Films page on the main site , otherwise the offer drops end of April. When you publish a guide, there is usually a rash of sudden activity and development, which is great and the point of getting excited about bouldering in the first place. Magnus Johnson has found some new bouldering near Kinlochleven, mentioning 'one roof which is simply huge! Think the inside of the Shelterstone but with no surrounding blocks...' which all sounds interesting! Hopefully we'll see some problems there soon. For the adventurous, it's at NN149609, most of the boulders are mossy, but there may be some potential. I had a skirt of the North East for the guide but found little of interest, but we obviously missed the bouldering at Forss, near Thurso, courtesy of Raymond Wallace... I'm only sorry I couldn't h...

Those of you locals maybe a little disappointed at the problem-count of your favourite venues in 'Bouldering in Scotland', do not fear! I have added some additional page downloads to the main site on the Scottish page. Venues include: Craigmaddie full topo, Shelterstone circuit, Scatwell, Ben A'an and The Whangie. Development continues apace, indeed, Tom Kirkpatrick has just updated the Cammachmore topo on Scottish Climbs , and Dave MacLeod has added a new V10 to the Pine boulders in Glen Nevis (The Bear Trap Prow , pics on his blog ) - he also did a very kind and exhaustive review for the new guide, thanks Dave! One of my problems as an independent publisher has been sourcing good photos for books and this is difficult on a limited budget as, quite fairly, photographers need paid just like the rest of us. This becomes a problem when you are doing a large edited collection and paying twenty photographers would quickly make a book too expensive, so we tend to rely on favou...

Just to remind all that the 'Bouldering in Scotland' and 'Elements' bouldering movie will be launched this Thursday evening at Cotswolds Outdoors, Crow Road, Glasgow, at 7pm. There will be a short talk and slideshow of new bouldering areas, as well as a twenty minute preview of the movie. Free wine and discounted stock at Cotswolds (book and DVD will be heavily discounted). Easy access and parking at Cotswolds, just besides Sainsbury's in Partick (Crow Road), or catch a tube to Partick and it's a two minute walk round the corner. There will be free wine and no doubt lots of banter about all the new bouldering areas... all questions will be answered. New venues include: Lost Valley, Craigmaddie, Coilessan, Ardnamurchan, Ardgour, Brin Rock etc. Everyone welcome!

Tenerife? Jeezo , you might say. Think of a volcanic carbuncle with a union-jack cocktail umbrella sticking out of it and you're pretty close. Two gin and tonics I needed just to be persuaded onto the plane. I stuck flight-mode on the phone and jacked in to something chilled while the plane got Britishly lathered. Tenerife does not promise much unless you're an over-hormoned 17 year old from Essex, then I guess it looks like a soda-pop dream sequence from Grease - all cheeky eager lads, fast cars, sunglasses, drinking games and all-night partying. Whatever floats your boat. We got our bags and were first in the hire car queue. Tenerife is a volcanic island off the coast of Africa, in the Canaries. That's from the brochures... think hot, black sand, sulphur etc. The island above the lucky-bag bracelet that is the the tourist strip is first of all banana plantations, then dry pine forest, then all spewed lava and crumbly ashy soil. Even the rocky coast is frazzled like bu...

They're nearly here! Both the new Bouldering in Scotland guide and the bouldering film 'Elements' will be available a little later in March. As a special prepub offer, the book and DVD are available for £30 plus p&p... that's a good offer folks, so if you want to buy both, you can do so securely through the Paypal buttons on the blog or on the film page on www.stonecountry.co.uk where you can also view a trailer of the movie. Pete Murray spent six months putting this film together, enduring some very elemental days with the camera, oblivious to crashing waves, snow, brass-monkey frosts, melting microphones, howling gales and endlessly failing boulderers (well, some of us!). What's the film about? Pete says: “elements” is a rock climbing film like no other, the four chapters – Water, Earth, Air and Fire – are linked with a narrative from the ecologist and land rights activist, Alistair McIntosh, whose thoughts on faerie magic and the human spirit fix a connec...