Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

The south peak ('Jean') on The Cobbler, 12th December 2015 Here's an interesting round-song of place-names for Arrochar, in cartullaries and statistical and printed records since 1395: Arrochar/Arochar/Arrochquhair/Arrochquhare/Arroquhar/Arachar/An Tairbeart Iar/An t-Àra ... I was walking uphill wondering what sticks, what's in a name, why do they change, does the landscape care, who are the caretakers of a place-name? We might just be flecks of mica flashing briefly on a sun-struck pebble in the streams, but names are important to us in our brief mappings of our landscapes. Our human territories are marked by names, sign-postings, marker boulders, paths and cairns, amongst other structures, both textual and physical. 'The Cobbler' mountain - Arrochar's finest and most distinctive peak - is a curious example of the fluidity of naming the landscape; of confusion, habit, fashion, politics, class, and misinformation. The confusion starts even w...

Mountaineering in Scotland: The Early Years by Ken Crocket (SMT, 2015) Review by John Watson History is the silent traveling companion of any mountaineer. The thematic thrust of this major work – as the back cover copy suggests – is that a knowledge of history and landscape enhances our climbing experience. Indeed, it is necessary to appreciate this fourth dimension as grounding for a longer-term sense of place and deeper satisfaction of our sport. Climbing in Scotland follows a deep palimpsest of visitation as climbers since the middle of the 19th century have traced each other’s steps on vertical ground, deviating only where the technology allowed deviation. Difficulty is always relative, but the landscape is the same, the challenge always present. There is one thread between us, and a hungering urge for return and revisit. This book looks to the first hunger pangs. The initial chapters guide us through the transition from landscape and geology as n...

High above the residential northern shores of the Clyde is a strip of sandstone geology outcropping all the way to Craigmaddie Muir in the east. It lies hidden under a mossy understorey mostly, and varies in consistency and quality, but was once the attention of neolithic archaeologists, until they had to bury what is one of Scotland's greatest rock-art sites.The 'Cochno Stone' was uncovered by the Rev James Harvey in 1887 on open land near what is now the Faifley housing estate. It is covered with dozens of cup and ring marks, grooved spirals, along with a ringed cross and a pair of four-toed feet. It was briefly a chalked-in tourist attraction until it was buried to prevent vandalism in 1964. Rock-art these days is a kinaesthetic thing, recorded as bouldering on photo-video networks, rather than pecked out on rock plinths. I've always like the connection between the vibrant, fluid circles and lines inscribed on the rock and the modern tracery of bouldering; ther...

With the high pressure settling over most of Scotland and providing windless weather and cold temperatures, the bouldering conditions are pretty good at the start of February. Some new projects are being worked on across the country. On the Moray Coast, a new sandstone roof venue akin to Cummingston looks excellent, if this little video is to go by, thanks to Hamish Fraser, Dave Wheeler and friends. New Bouldering Project, Moray Coast from Hamish Fraser on Vimeo . In Glasgow, Serious Climbing is putting the finishing design touches to the Commonwealth Games legacy project that is the Cuningar Loop Boulder Park. This park is due to open in the spring sometime, and first glimpses look jaw-dropping. The site features what appears to be about a dozen moulded blocs on a forested plot of land in a loop of the Clyde river, near Dalmarnock. Alex Gorham has blogged a picture of a nicely-cleaned sandstone bloc near Milngavie, hopefully we'll have some hard projects ...

The years fold into one another, and layers appear... We ran away to Kintyre over New Year, to the sheltered nook that is Carradale, on the east coast of Kintyre, facing the west coast of Arran, to ride out the storms and see in the New Year, a convenient 10-yard meander from the Cruban Bar (and an old-fashioned pool table I came to know well). In the short 6 hour window of light (and the 3rd of January was spectacular in its stillness between the fronts), the plan was to find some bouldering on the east coast -  I'd never found much aside from the shark-fins at Skipness which were not that satisfying. Finding the perfect line in a remote corner of Scotland is always invigorating and you just know the fractal coast will reveal something amazing just round the next bay if you keep going. So I took off round the headland south of Carradale, which on Google Earth looks like a giant pointed-finger cursor pointing south to the open sea. Most of the headland is a rhododen...

The full-colour guide introduces the climber to the classic bouldering in the forest of Fontainebleau. This new edition has been expanded and improved to include: ● Classic circuits and highlight problems ● Walk-in oriented topos to over 30 key venues ● Test piece tick-lists 5+ to 8c for 320 classic problems ● Photo topos for multi-problem blocs ● Visual index, maps and detailed access notes ● Essential information for first-time visitors ● Feature bloc photography Have a look through the preview on Issuu below:

When I first arrived at Dumbarton Rock, I never thought the dramatic geology I saw  –  the square-cut overhanging main faces, the giant beaked boulders, the moody facets of black and orange rock  –   were anything but solid and unchanging. I never thought there would be a character to the rock other than its intimidating immediacy and its industrial ‘clash and bang’ of sheer physicality and  its contextual setting in the post-industrial decline of  Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven .    Maybe that’s what happens on all first visits to a climbing venue  –  a kind of heightened sense of the place’s physical presence  –  but if you spend years repeating visits to a place, it becomes a more temporal or invisible thing, in fact it almost vanishes before your eyes, first impressions rubbed out, to be replaced by folded-in memories of faced-down failures and subtle successes, and countless other small details. In fact f...