21 June 22 September

Calmac stopped non residents from going to the Hebrides in March so the roads were very peaceful. Several people commented that they were seeing more wildlife than usual.

I spotted a ‘new’ crag from the road, possibly because driving was a lot more relaxed. Bealach na Ba goes through the crag so a cow theme seemed like a reasonable idea. I expected there would be a lot of routes so the first one, with Dot MacLean, was called Stampede.

Travel restrictions were relaxed in early July so Cynthia was allowed back on Mull after about 3 months, we climbed on a few crags.

Had our first visit to Lewis for 12 years (photo above), most campsites were closed because of Covid but we eventually stumbled across a fine one.

We went back to Bornesketaig on Skye a couple of times. Photo of Stephen Kennedy on a new route. We climbed the obvious crack just left last year, called Glue Cuts after I cut myself on the deposits stuck to the rope.

I did a bit of hill walking and had close encounters with ptarmigan.

Had a trip down south, first visit to the Lakes for five years. Pete Whillance led us up a few routes.

Andy Hyslop and Pete have been developing Silverdale, a short coastal cliff in Lancashire. There were a lot of climbers there including Gerry Peel (Pete and Gerry had met once a few decades earlier), Gerry liked the place and had climbed several routes that day pulling holds off all of them!

Cynthia photo of Andy, Pete and me.