Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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...

Hard times we bring upon ourselves. Slowly, wilfully, over the centuries, things disappear, ownership takes all. Take the mythical Caledonian Forest. A canopy of blacky greens, flashed with broad red limbs, standing shoulder to shoulder through the glens, over the bealachs, climbing the mountain sides. I was at the head of Glen Nevis, at the gorge car-park, having driven through a remnant of this forest, like a battlefield after the war, a few stragglers - twisted, wounded soldiers of gruesome witness and blooded limb. I was keen to go a step further into a 'lost corrie' cupped between the Ben Nevis and the arcing ridge of Aonach Beag (paradoxically higher than Aonach Mor by 13m). Rarely visited and tucked away from the North Face crowds on The Ben and the skiers on the far side of Aonach Mor, this corrie translated as 'Corrie of the Pine Woods'. I climbed steeply up through the gap of the Bealach nan Cumhann (Pass of Lamenting!) and was stunned by the austere '...

I received a copy of Dave Flanagan's long-anticipated guide to Bouldering in Ireland and it is obvious from the first flick-through that this is one of the most stunningly produced bouldering guides out there! It is simply slabber-inducing and the sense of adventure jumps off each page. Some of the rock, such as the Fermanagh Brimstones and Loch Dan granite, looks superb and the growing plethora of coastal and mountain venues means a round-trip  would fill a very long summer... The guide is designed on the popular landscape format which allows the clear mapping room to breathe, as well as framing 2-page photo-location spreads to clarify the 'glen clusters' typical of Celtic landscape bouldering. The classic areas such as Glendalough and Carrickfinn are well documented and it was good to see the Fair Head chaos well mapped and represented for the north of Ireland. It is packed with bright photos and the route descriptions are deliberately spare and modelled on the 7+8 ...

I received a copy of Dave Flanagan's long-anticipated guide to Bouldering in Ireland and it is obvious from the first flick-through that this is one of the most stunningly produced bouldering guides out there! It is simply slabber-inducing and the sense of adventure jumps off each page. Some of the rock, such as the Fermanagh Brimstones and Loch Dan granite, looks superb and the growing plethora of coastal and mountain venues means a round-trip  would fill a very long summer... The guide is designed on the popular landscape format which allows the clear mapping room to breathe, as well as framing 2-page photo-location spreads to clarify the 'glen clusters' typical of Celtic landscape bouldering. The classic areas such as Glendalough and Carrickfinn are well documented and it was good to see the Fair Head chaos well mapped and represented for the north of Ireland. It is packed with bright photos and the route descriptions are deliberately spare and modelled on the 7+8 ...

We have more stock of the Dumbarton Guide available (on the climbing books page), though well done to Will Atkinson for putting it out of date with the send of the 'project' he calls Ladderman ... one for the tall folk I think! We have a very promising crag/boulder wall in the Northwest from Ian Taylor, but I guess development and location will be revealed this year... this does look attractive mind you! Mike Lee visited the Katrine Bloc:, the baddest, meanest, weakling-crusher rock in Scotland, here's Mike under the unclimbed front face. It takes over two hours to get to, best bivvi for a weekend and bring some fillet steaks...that face is 8a to 9a only. I retreated wishing I was younger, fitter, stronger... it's located under the Meall na Boinede crags overlooking the north end of Loch Katrine. The best way to get there is to hitch a lift with the postie bus from Strronachlachlar, or cycle/walk round the north end of the loch from here. Get off at Portnellan...

Ian Taylor's complete Ullapool bouldering guide is now available here and on the new  Stone Country Bouldering  site. This gives the most complete low-down to date on the bouldering round the capital of the North West: Rhue Blocks, Cnoc Breac, Tighnamara, Ardmair Beach, Ardmair Crag, Reiff in the Woods, Reiff and other areas.  Ullapool Bouldering Author: Ian Taylor Publisher: Ian Taylor 44 pp Full Colour Price: £4.99

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...