The right honourable Nail Grimes asked me to come up with my favourite five Stanage routes for the 2007 guide. For some reason, I did seven. Still, maths never was my strong suit…. Taurus Crack HS 4c “Nice little warm-up, “ says the missus, “only hard severe.” Treacherous things, grades. Never trust ‘em. Sweating and […]
‘Tis a devious art, interviewing, from the verbal foreplay of the Richard and Judy sofa to the bare knuckle thuggery of the full Paxo correctional chair and every squirm inducing point between. The aim is always the same – to inform, to cajole the interviewee into unintended confidences and to entertain. Sadly, the result is […]
Found this old article of mine and it made me chuckle. Guess we’ve all heard climbers bullshitting like this and you’d get something like it from mountain biking, boarding, surfing. Every counter-culture has it’s own language….. “No, just look at it will you! It’s at least a fifth smaller than the right one. Hell, […]
It’s beginning to get dark. Down the valley the clouds above a distant sea wear a bashful blush. I’ve been here for hours, perched on tiny footholds, dithering. I take stock. I’m at least seventy feet above my last piece of gear. Even allowing for outrageous exaggeration that’s a ground fall if I screw up. […]
French climbers…. Fashion sense firmly rooted in the eighties, strength beyond imagination and a grasp of philosophy second only to Eric Cantona’s – “Ah, for you Rosbif’s, zer clambing is so mechanical, an exercise in imperialistic domination. For ze French it is vertical poetry, an attempt to find a beautiful staircase in zer rock. When […]
Not long after I moved to Sheffield, I discovered a perfect bike ride that took me from my front door onto the moors of the Peak District. Arriving at the highest point of the ride, I stopped to savour the view. To my confusion, I found myself choked with emotion, looking down on the city, […]
Brian turns his back on the computer, parks himself on the settee and surveys the pile of cams, nuts, hexes and assorted paraphernalia at his feet. The gear has a faint smell, a subtle oily pong. Taking a sup of tea, he leans forward again and sniffs, the almost imperceptible scent awakening memories. He retrieves […]
I was hanging out at Avoca Beach a few years back. Well, doesn’t everyone? It doesn’t have quite the caché of Copa Cabana or Bondi, but it boasts a superb break on its day. On a slightly glowering afternoon, with an onshore breeze knocking the top off the swell along the rest of the beach, […]
It was involuntary, almost like a cough or sneeze. As Tobias fell I murmured “Stay in you bastards.” This wasn’t some trite entreaty, nor premeditated, but a genuine, instinctive terror that all his gear would come out. I watched as he reached the full stretch of the rope, the belayer jerked forward and Tobias stopped. […]
Don’t you just love the Grit? No? Me neither sometimes. It really is a love/hate relationship for me because climbing on the Grit is all about the three C’s, commitment, confidence and cajones and the chances of me demonstrating all three on the same day is remote. Add to that the fact that I’m not […]
He was puzzled by the white marks on the stone blocks of the bridge until one day he saw someone climbing across it on tippy toes, fingers scratching for purchase, dipping intermittently into a little bag at his waist. Shy and awkward, he’d watched from across the street and wondered. When the climber had gone, […]
They’d seen a sign pinned to some kind of electricity sub-station on the way to the crag, ‘Danger of Death, Do Not Climb’. It’d made them laugh. Someone had wondered out loud if it was some kind of portent and they’d laughed again. Brian didn’t feel like laughing though, he was by his own admission […]
The Cromlech, high and aloof, is a geometric aberration lording it over less well-appointed brethren – Grochan, Wastad, Craig Ddu, the slouching B-team. Ever since my first time in the pass, it had been the target, an Elysian playground for the climbing elite. Ron, Don, Joe and Pete had, over the years, created a mountaineering […]