Lowland Outcrops

Best climbing book in scotland! Hands down. Excellent topos for all the crags. Amazing photography and interesting tales from the local crags and climbers. Really useful and inspiring. Hope the team get the chance to write more about the other parts of the country.

In terms of climbing/route descriptions, this book cannot be faulted, and is up to the usual high standards we have come to expect from the SMC/publications. ...However, this book falls completely - and potentially destroys the SMC as an organisation - in terms of its being harnessed to push the current political propaganda machine.The book features interviews with a number of complete nobodies, who have contributed nothing to Scotland's climbing - but it gives them a space within the book purely for the purposes of ticking diversity boxes/promoting transgenderism etc (see the included image).The climbing community will, in part, be scared to speak out about this, as certain climbing forums in the UK are pushing the same agenda, creating the impression that this is the desired direction of 'the climbing community', when nothing could be further from the truth.The SMC would do well to remember that the development of Scotland's climbing is entirely the product of white males - no surprises there, given the demographic of Scotland (just as there would be no surprises to find, for example, activities in Namibia furthered by Namibians...) - and the SMC itself exists thanks to white males - the very community they are now attacking.Interviews should feature those who have pushed the Scottish grading system further (...I see no piece on Dave MacLeod...) even historical pieces on the likes of Raeburn etc would be a very welcome addition... but no, the SMC gives us lesbians scratching their way up a VDiff...I for one will be cancelling my SMC membership - and I would encourage all other SMC members to do the same. Let the SMC suffer; in fact, let their ranks be filled with the crowd they desire - which is clearly not the demographic that have kept them in existence all these years...If any SMC members could write a follow-up review here after the next SMC meet and let me know if there were transgender bathrooms at the meet, that would be great.This book is a complete disgrace to the history of Scottish climbing - and to the history of the SMC, who deserve to collapse as a product of the path they are choosing to walk. Something has gone very, very wrong within their ranks.Then again, given the current climate, I may identify as a woman and join the Scottish Women's Mountaineering Club, thus furthering the hut access I have when I travel north. Swings and roundabouts.