The attentive reader may have noticed a blog silence of several months

This has been due to technical difficulties that are not yet fully resolved....stay tuned in the New Year...

Dropped in at Stonehenge (about which I'll say nothing on this occasion) on the way to Dorset, on week-long trip seeing out the month of June. It rained quite a bit, as it seems to have done everywhere for weeks, but the South was the place to be (and probably sill is).

First and last stop on the Dorset sea-cliffs was the geologically interesting Lulworth Cove, and Stair Hole.

There was quite a big swell running, which meant that the rock in the caves was greasy-wet. I peeled into the sea twice, off the same set of soaking wet holds on the Maypole (6a)...once attempting the route clockwise and once going anticlockwise. Bracing.

More Deep water soloing at Swanage

Seacombe, Aquanaut Buttress. One of a bunch from London on Lost in Time (4+)

Brave person moving out of the corner of Codfish (5a) towards the roofs of The Howling (7b).


Freeborn Man (6c), Connor Cove. One of the London team waltzed it, one sketched it, one fell off, the others watched (as did I....the thought of trying it was just too much for me on the day...maybe next time!). The sea was much noisier and choppier than the photo would suggest...it was pretty windy too.

Troubled Waters (5+), Connor. Juggy, steep and fun.

Followed this up with some bouldering and stone-circling on Dartmoor...

The rather spooky Plague Market at Merrivale, Dartmoor. In the plague years of the 1700's, victims were quarantined on the Moor, and used to leave money in exchange for food at the site. Farmers would take the dough and leave some vittals. Even if you didn't know this, you could be forgiven for feeling slightly unsettled by the barren setting.

A big site, with two almost-parallel stone rows, 3 stone circles, burial chambers, and lots of hut circles. There's nothing like this in the north of England.

It contrasts somewhat with the woodland setting of the Nine Stones of Winterbourne Abbass, Dorset, which provided a useful stop-off on the way...

Spot the weasel


Clue...he's at 7 o'clock. One of three larking about in the trees on the approach to the upper tier, Horseshoe Quarry

A grumpy Lewis chessman.

This king is one of a hoard of 80-odd Norse chessmen found in 1831, buried in a sandbank near Uig, Lewis. Originating in the 11th century, they were carved from walrus tusks, and are thought to have been very valuable items. They were probably buried by a merchant, possibly on his trade route to Ireland from the Norse regions of Scandinavia. Seemingly, he never came back to collect them, and they were discovered centuries later in uncertain circumstances.

I went to Uig on 14 June, almost mid-summer. It rained. There was a force-six gale. It was bollock-freezing.

The facial expressions of the Lewis chesspieces is uniformly glum. It seems that 800 years on a beach in the Outer Hebrides is enough to dent the optimism of the most inanimate of objects.

Incidentally, the game of chess is thought to have been invented in India in about 600 CE. Strangely, I never knew that until I went to Lewis, which is prufe, shud it be kneaded, that travel can be very edukational.

It rains a lot on Lewis.

Apparrently, in Gaelic there are 7564 words for rain. And that doesn't include 'snow'. Or 'hail'. Or 'pissingwellyingdeggingcatsanddogsstairrods'.

Callanish - where better to be on a grey day? So good I went there twice...

Preserved blackhouse village on Lewis. The dwellings were inhabited by livestock and humans alike, and were so-called to distinguish them from later houses featuring such luxuries as windows. Hang on, these blackhouses actually have windows...so much for that theory...

Nesting guillemots on the cliffs of the Butt of Lewis. Not much shelter from the prevailing Westerlies...

The Lewis sea cliffs. Here at Screaming Geo be climbs of the utmost quality, according to the SMC guidebook. However, I spent a rainy afternoon trying to locate several specific crags further up the coast, and failing miserably...so much for the SMC guidebook.

It was raining anyway.

Crofters' bathroom. Bring your own plug - fills within seconds - no plumbing required.

Norse mill, restored by local enthusiasts.

The style of roofing, with the thatch held down by ropes and rocks, was maintained until the last blackhouses were inhabited in the 1950s. Doesn't look very waterproof to me.

Carloway, the best-preserved broch on Lewis.

Essentially a broch is a type of dry-stone built conical house. Carloway was built in the fourth century CE, and was still in use in the 1600s.

Luxury features include fully integrated ventilation system, and sheltered hilltop position.

On the horizon, the megalithic construction at Callanish












Callanish is made of thin slabs of Lewisian gneiss, which ranks as one of the oldest rocks on the Earth's surface. The rock's inky layers make it a striking building material, in plentiful supply on the sea-cliffs a couple of miles to the west.

Seals basking on the shore; South Uist. Well, not so much basking as taking a shower. Suberbly adapted to an aquatic existence. I wanted to grow fins and join them.

Where there's rain there's rainbows.

The stunning white beach scenery of South Uist. Hebridean beaches rival any in the World, offering unrivalled rainbathing in unspoilt surroundings.

 

 

These stones form part of the cicle of Pobull Fhinn, the largest of the Uist stone circles, situated about half-a-mile south-east of Barpa Langais.

Despite its remote location this is the first Scottish stone circle I have visited. It's actually oval in layout, which may sound like a trivial detail, but compared with their English and Welsh counterparts, many of the Scottish stone circles are irregular in shape.

This heap of rocks is Barpa Langais, on the island of North Uist, which has the highest density of Neolithic tombs in the British Isles. It's the best-preserved chambered cairn in the Outer Hebrides. Inside, the walls and roof of the original burial chamber are still intact - amazing given the prevailing conditions and the age of the structure (at least 4500 years).

 

Hebridean flora include foxgloves and a striking tall yellow flower that grows in bogs.

 

Perfect weather on Skye. One could be forgiven for being well-psyched to traverse the Cuillins, seen here in all their glory. However, one's disappointment that the weather broke next morning will be easily understood. It rained all day. And the next.

I made a diversion to the Outer Hebrides to see some megalithic monuments, in the naive hope that the good weather would return in due course. In the event it rained for 10 days before I gave up and came home. No foot was set on the hill. It's raining still.

 


The tidal entrance to the amazing Spar Cave, Skye. The calcite formations include huge staircases of flowstone, and are among the best I've seen in the UK.