Uhhh, that winter light...sure is getting in my eyes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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...