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Forty-eight hours at the Lairig Leacach bothy — a typecast

In a departure from my usual form for trip reports, I’m writing this one up as a typecast — that is, scans of pages typed on a manual typewriter. I used an analogue camera to take all the photos on this trip so it feels appropriate. I hope you enjoy

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Scotland’s last glacier … as it appears in the present day!

Photo (C) James Roddie 2014, all rights reserved Back in January, it emerged that the last glacier in the Scottish highlands may have lasted well into the 1700s. Coire an Lochain, a deeply carved corrie in the northern Cairngorms, was believed to be the site of one of the last

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Winter climbing conditions – how much information is too much?

British winter climbing is in a strange place at the moment. We like to get away to the hills as an escape from “real life,” and yet the world of climbing frequently mirrors the world around us even if we like to pretend that it doesn’t. Look around you.

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The Mounth Passes by Neil Ramsay and Nate Pedersen: book review

The Mounth Passes: A Heritage Guide to the Old Ways through the Grampian Mountains by Neil Ramsay and Nate Pedersen (Kindle) This slim ebook came to my attention through the Scotways Twitter account. Scotways is one of the oldest outdoor access organisations in the country, established in 1845 to help

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Scotland’s last surviving glacier lasted into the 1700s, research shows

My new novel, The Atholl Expedition, asks a question: when did the last glacier in Scotland die? Was it thousands of years ago in the prehistoric past, as is commonly believed, or did a glacial mass survive in one of the remote and secret recesses of the Highlands, away from

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Defeated by Lochnagar but inspired by Balmoral

Wham! The gust of wind punched me in the chest, lifted me off my feet, and hurled me twenty feet back through the air to land, dazed, on a snowbank. I struggled to get up again but the force of the wind was relentless, pushing me back step by step,

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A week of mist and magic in Glen Shiel

This time last week I was sitting in the public bar of the Cluanie Inn, nursing a pint of Red Cuillin and reflecting on yet another spectacular day in the mountains of Kintail. All of my trips to the mountains this year have coincided with pretty decent weather, all things

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Blog Spotlight: self powered

Image from www.selfpowered.net self powered(Backpacking, Mountaineering, and Photography)Run by David Lintern  This series of articles showcases blogs of merit and interest, usually (but not exclusively!) connected with the topics of mountaineering, Scotland, writing, and history. I discovered this blog fairly recently, after a certain article of

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The mountains of my life: Aonach Dubh West Face

This blog post is part of a series of articles on mountains that have a special significance for me. See also: Bowfell,Tryfan, Stob Ban, and Castor. Aonach Dubh. For me the very name has the ring of adventure about it. This mountain wall in Glencoe faces west and is

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A sample scene from “The Atholl Expedition”

THE ATHOLL EXPEDITIONExtract from Chapter IVAugust the 24th, 1847Unpublished First Draft material ~ uncorrected and unedited Victoria wondered when Albert would be back from his hunt. In the early years of their marriage she had sulked when he spent time apart, but gradually she had come to realise that he needed

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