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Two’s company….
My recollection is of a steaming day spent on the cool flanks of Dinas Mot. The Missus and I were engaged on The Cracks while nearby a party did battle with Lorraine. To be exact, they were doing battle with each other, squabbling like an old married couple. “Will you give me bloody slack when […]
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The seven ages
‘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 […]
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The move
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. […]
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Ten reasons to love climbing….
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 […]
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The Year of the Brat
JH’s Tongue In Cheek 2008 Rock Review January British climbing CEO Dave Turnbull tempts fate by declaring at a lavish BMC apparatchiks’ banquet, “We’ve abolished boom and bust. Grades will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.” His confidence seems justified when 12 year old Pete Whittaker plays hooky to climb Grandad’s Slab at E7. […]
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Blessed Youth
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, […]
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Simple Pleasures
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 […]
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Days Like These
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 […]