In reply to Alasdair Fulton:
Glad to see your post finally got some replies, Alasdair, despite the prodding needed!
I did Stone Bastion in 2021, using the SMC Cairngorms guide description. It mostly made sense apart from P2, which I'm not sure we found. I asked Rab about it afterwards, but (not surprising 30 years on) he couldn't remember where he'd gone on that pitch.
I wasn't aware of the direct variation you climbed, because it wasn't mentioned in the guide we had. I also belayed too early on P6, probably (according to my notes) because it is 40m, rather than the 25, the (definitive) guidebook says.
But the oddest thing in the description I was using is how it describes the top pitch. One of the joys of this route is the way the 2 finishing pitches remain completely hidden until you are beneath them, in our case leading to wild, yet ultimately inaccurate, speculation as to the exit feature we were heading for. Anyway, the last pitch climbs a huge flake to the right of a tall blind corner. The flake swallows gear and has lots of good locks. However, our description quite specifically told us to climb the corner, only resorting to the flake for gear.
I must have been feeling either unusually compliant, or perhaps just knackered, but at first that is exactly what I tried to do. Of course the corner has no gear whatsoever, as well as a paucity of holds, so after a while I just set off up the flake - though I did return to the corner at least twice, just to see if I was missing something... Which I wasn't.
In retrospect I realise I was just daft to try to climb the corner, but the route was completely unchalked and I was being an automaton, rather than exercising 'sound mountaineering judgement'.
As a result of these unnecessary excursions I was pretty pumped on that top pitch, and I would just like to record my disappointment, therefore, in hoards who have since dismissed it as a trifling E4, 'probably E3', or, worst of the lot, 'E2 on a roadside crag'...!
Neil