We study the effective slip length for unidirectional flow over a superhydrophobic mattress of bubbles in the small-solid-fraction limit . Using scaling arguments and utilising an ideal-flow analogy we elucidate the singularity of the slip length as : relative to the periodicity it scales as for protrusion angles and as for . We continue with a detailed asymptotic analysis using the method of matched asymptotic expansions, where ‘inner’ solutions valid close to the solid segments are matched with ‘outer’ solutions valid on the scale of the periodicity, where the bubbles protruding from the solid grooves appear to touch. The analysis yields asymptotic expansions for the effective slip length in each of the protrusion-angle regimes. These expansions overlap for intermediate protrusion angles, which allows us to form a uniformly valid approximation for arbitrary protrusion angles . We thereby explicitly describe the transition with increasing protrusion angle from a logarithmic to an algebraic small-solid-fraction slip-length singularity.