The Old Man of Stoer, Monday 10 May 2009
 

Gearing up. What stuff do you need to climb a sea-stack?

There was helpful, contradictory information from several sources to help us formulate a half-assed plan. There was ropework. There was guesswork. There was getting wet. There was getting lost. There were wide rounded cracks that you couldn't get any gear into. There was damp rock. There was a deckout situation. There were dry mouths (well one, at least). There was a howling wind and a big swell. There was blistering sunshine on one side, and freezing shade on the other. There were 15 rusted-shut locking karabiners on the summit abseil anchor. There was daft abseiling into space, and briefly, a terrifying Tony Kurtz moment. There was a second abseil off the worst pegs I've ever seen that weren't acually broken. A grand day out was had by all.  

 

 

 

 

 

Stac Pollaidh in the evening sun
 

Tha amazing views looking north from the summit of Stac Pollaidh. Suilven is the big fin-shaped mountain, made of sandstone. All else is lochains set in a wilderness landscape of Lewisian gneiss, a rock as old as you like. Kelloggs don't make scenery like this for anybody else.


 

 

Crux pitch, Party on the Patio. Martin climbing 

An easy bit on Party on the Patio (VS 5a), Stac Pollaidh.  

Petestack and friend on Overhanging Crack, (S 4a), Seal Song area, Reiff sea cliffs  

About to go climbing at Reiff 

 
Seascape at Reiff, near Ullapool. Windy day with much swell.

Maen-y-Bardd, aka The Poet stone, Tal-y-Fan. Legend has it that anyone who spends the night beneath the capstone will either go mad or become a poet. Not sure what happens if you're a mad poet already...

 

Menhirs ancient and modern at Tal-y-Fan, near Conway  

Standing stones at Penros Fielw, Anglesey. Holyhead Mountain in the background.  

Stone circles in East Cumbria. You really need Copey's 'The Modern Antiquarian' and a decent OS map to find most of the stuff around Shap - the bottom circle is at Oddendale. There are so many sites it's tempting to think of some extensive local civilisation centred around the area, which would have been wooded and fertile.

Today, it must rank as one of the least appealing landscapes in Cumbria, or even the World, due to the unrelentingly dull grassed slopes and moorland. And Shap, well what a dump. Seldom does one come across a settlement that makes Accrington seem like Seville set in a landscape that makes The Falklands seem like Mallorca.

The top circle, Gamelands, is in more attractive limestone farmland near Orton. It's quite big, must be the 4th biggest in Cumbria after Long Meg, Castlerigg and Sunkenkirk. It's in a field of its own, only 200 yards from a road but you could drive past every day and never know it's there. It has great views despite being in the valley, and seems to be aligned directly between a distant High Street in the west, and that peak on the Coast to Coast with all the old cairns on top in the east. Whether this is significant or not is, of course, unknown.

 

 

 

Desecrated stone circle at Shap, Cumbria. A couple of months after the pic was taken, I happened to be on a train from Edinburgh to Lanaster (a mere 2 hour journey), and, I suppose, momentarily accessed the centre of the circle without having to trespass on Railtrack property. Result, even if I was asleep at the time.