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Johnny Dawes – Moving On
Interviewing Johnny Dawes is both fascinating and challenging, as much intellectual joust as interview. Compared to discussions I’ve had with some other climbers, it’s like listening to free-form jazz rather than some anodyne boy band, the melodies obscure, sometimes dissonant and prone to sudden tangents, but never, ever boring. The challenge with Dawes is to […]
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Favouritism….
Favouritism can be a fickle business. I can change my mind about my favourite mammal, amphibian or bird in an instant, so diverse are the triggers. Stoat, otter or beaver? Frog, toad or newt? It must be something to do with the cocktail of hormones that reconfigure the system when you’re engaging with nature. When […]
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Pandemic pedalling….
Pandemic pedalling is an eye-opener. My rides have evolved into a whole new experience, multi-faceted and mind-expanding. Which is weird. I’m retired and, therefore, the new normal is the old normal for me. I ride when I like. But there has been a subtle change, a realisation that the time I have at my disposal […]
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Beer talk….
“No, just look at it will you! It’s at least a fifth smaller than the right one. Hell, if my right bicep is Arnold Schwartzenegger the left’s Kylie Minogue. My training must be wrong or I’m doing too many right handed undercuts or I’m a freak. No, don’t laugh!” Perry grins and takes a big […]
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Lapwing….
Wrestling the binoculars from my bag, I hurried to focus, desperate not to miss this treat. But I needn’t have worried, my target was stationary, head held high, plume erect and elegant. A posing lapwing. I was overcome by a sense of relief. Eight years ago I’d spotted one nesting in this corner of the Peak […]
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Just write….
In the end, if you want to write, you have to just, well, write. When the early morning urge to hurry breakfast in order to attack an empty page has long departed, it is an agonising process reawakening that determination to winnow out from the recesses of the mind a pithy phrase or an original […]
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The accidental eco-vandal….
I was woken early the other morning. It was one of those now common off-kilter January days, eerily warm. The sound of a mistle thrush piping away, experimenting with his spring song after winter purdah, was enough to drag me from slumber and make me smile. It harked back to my time farming in Suffolk […]
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National Parks – National Tragedy?
Bear with me because I’ve come over all John Lennon. Imagine for a moment there are no national parks. Imagine what it would be like if the access we hold dear was a pipe dream, if the ecology of our wild areas wasn’t protected, if unimpeded development was taking bites out of the Peak District, […]
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Johnny Dawes – a storm in a teacup?
Johnny Dawes – Moving On Interviewing Johnny Dawes is both fascinating and challenging, as much intellectual joust as interview. Compared to discussions I’ve had with some other climbers, it’s like listening to free-form jazz rather than some anodyne boy band, the melodies obscure, sometimes dissonant and prone to sudden tangents, but never, ever […]
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The KTM Kapoho 27.5+ – more of everything?
The prospect of losing your bike for a week while TFTuned work their magic is always scary, particularly when the UK is enjoying the longest dry spell since the last ice age. Thankfully, my pal Henry Nottage at Tony Butterworth’s had a solution – a courtesy bike. However, he’s known me long enough to […]
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SHAFF Review
Another SHAFF, another crop of first class movies. When the quality is as high as this, the critic’s job is a real pleasure. The Trail to Kazbegi is proper ruffty, tuffty mountain biking in genuine bona-fide wilderness. Majestic landscapes are complemented by some superb endless trails that have never seen a mountain bike tyre before. If […]
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National Trust trial outdoor pursuits licensing scheme.
The Peak Adventure Sports Alliance (PASA) has alerted the National Trust (NT) to its reservations about the new licensing scheme the NT is proposing to trial at Longshaw and other sites. It is difficult to see anything of merit in this latest scheme. 1. One of the NT’s stated intentions is to “Ensure that provision is run at a […]
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SHAFF Highlights – Operation Moffatt
I read Gwen Moffat’s Space Below My Feet early in my climbing career when women were still strange and exotic creatures in climbing circles and those that ventured out were treated to a quick top rope on a fiendish 5c by a surly boyfriend before being asked to return to tea-making. Which goes some way to […]
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SHAFF Highlights – Mountain Bikes and Bothy Nights
Alastair Humphreys has produced a charming short film that is essentially a paean to the delights of Scottish mountain bothies. Armed only with an Orange mountain bike and minimal bike-packing kit, he regularly takes the night train from London in order to recharge his batteries and enjoy the solitude of the glens. Simple and unselfconsciously poetic, […]