​A 100 good E7s list. I’ve been meaning to do one for years but held off because of not getting up to do Scoop, Chisel and Shadowdancer on Lewis/Harris nor the ones on Shelterstone such as Realms of the senses and Elise D’amor which also look like some of the best around. Dave Macleod also says Hard Drive on Creag Mo should be on the list (as should Sunburst). I guess this is a slightly more Welsh and Lakes based list but most are well worth an ascent and I’ve listed some of the more amenable ones with a minus (-) sign and the ones that are tough or bordering on E8 (or might feel it for an unchalked onsight) with a +, most of the tougher ones are big leads which are fine if you abseil inspect them but nails otherwise. For truly piss ones I’ve put 2 – signs where tons (100s) of E6s will feel a lot harder than these routes and they might well be E6 and I promise hand on heart i didnt do this specifically for the only ones Calum, Posh Tom and Angus have done. Some of the routes are rather small but nevertheless worthwhile, particularly routes like the recent Dispossessed and the old Beau Geste and Braille Trail. I’ve only thrown the Bells the Bells in there because it is a contender for the UKs first E7 but many of the other routes on the North Stack wall are much better (and safer), such as the Clown. I’ve been rather shameless and have thrown in a few of my climbs, but they are some of the best recent ones and most have good gear and deserve traffic. I’m not sorry to say that none of Calums routes in Tin Can Alley or elsewhere made it onto the list.

​ I remember the mental ‘push’ I had in 2000 when I first managed to onsight E7s, starting with Camouflage, De Quincy and The Bells the Bells in the summer before getting the kicking of my life on Masters Wall which I’m sure is E9. I was soloing a lot of the big lakes E4s and the odd e5 at the time and could solo 30 e2s-4s in a morning but onsighting serious e7s still felt ‘pushy’ as it meant climbing technical 6a/b moves where you were going to hurt yourself badly or die so confidence, competency and fatalism were pretty key. Part of the reason for this list is because at around this level often not a lot is known about the climbs, hence you can have the mother of all fuck ups such as Masters Wall getting a grade of E7 which was a key factor in me nearly disappearing age 19. All the routes on the list are around the E7 mark and are of good quality (beware the Craig Dorys ones for rock obvs), Cure for a sick Mind is soft E7 7a with a long sling on the 3rd bolt and would be E8 without this sling, and you go direct past the 3rd bolt!.

​    If you manage to onsight any of them when unchalked and without watching your friend climb it first then well done, many people who have climbed E9s haven’t onsighted at this level or have done very few because it’s hard to do, particularly when they are unchalked which can make route-finding miles harder on blankish rock which is I presume partly why the ‘cleans hands gang’ was once a thing. Of the 15 E9s I’ve done only 2 have felt as ‘difficult’ an experience as onsighting a route of E7 and they were 2 of the technically easiest E9s but which had the highest dose of danger!.  The hardest onsight ascent I know of in the UK might well have been Ian Vickers on Nothing to Fear (Pembroke) back in the 90s, pumpy, dangerous, insecure and importantly unchalked.
    Many of the ones listed are actually pretty well protected, the ones on Dove, Nesscliffe and Pembroke particularly which is why they have some of the better travelled E7s in the UK. Some on the list are on there to try and get more people on them, for instance 2 of the easier E7s are on the Lleyn, where you’d normally expect very serious routes you actually have 2 fun ones with good rock, Deep Sea Spex and the Apprentice. Most of the routes are pretty varied, some famous, some esoteric but all of the climbs are worth a trip for and some, such as Skye Wall, Great Escape, Always the Sun, Marksman, Kaya, Flying Dutchman and Spirit Guide are totally brilliant. Good luck

                     -Rumblefish (Cromlech)                         Violent Breed (painted walls, Rhoscolyn)
-Juggernaut (Glen Nevis)           Marksman (Bosigran)              -Romantic Reality (Craig y banchair)
                 - -Authentic Desire (cloggy)- probably E6 with lots of good small wires (brilliant and easiest on this list)
Flying Dutchman (lundy)              +Dawes Rides the shovelhead (raven, langdale)       -Fifth Ace (lundy)       
-Dalriada (cobbler)                          Intensive Scare(lundy)          Strawberries (tremadog)
Rocafella (fairhead)                   Masters Edge (millstone)
         -Way of the jive monkey (fairhead)                  -Great White (Pembroke)
            Eye of the Tiger (dovedale)              Charon/styx   (fairhead)              
    Raped by Affection (slate)           Monster in a box (Pembroke)
Primate   (mournes)                           Heart of Stone (gallt yr ogof)               Toploader (millstone)
                    -De quincy (bowderstone)                 Borderline   (scafell)                 
Camouflage      (Langstrath)                 Flattery (Langdale)               
Sex & Religion (Gogarth)             Remission (Reecastle)                +Zero direct (suicide wall)                
            Iron Man  (iron crag, lakes)                 Always the sun (Pembroke)                
Over the Beach  (Llanberis pass)                 Vlad the impailer  (dove, lakes)         
      Big softy (Pembroke)                    Mad Brown (wen zawn)
              -Bucket dynasty   (dove)            Dusk till dawn (dove)               
         Dusk till dawn (huntsmans)            Boat to naxos   (huntsmans)       
-On the rocks (back Bowden)        Fettish for fear (dove)           Terminal Twilight   (Huntsmans)                   
Good the bad and the ugly (gordale)
-Nightflight (Pembroke)                      Janus   (curbar)                      Dispossessed (ogwen)
-From a distance (Pembroke)              Beua geste   (Froggat)             Satans little helper (langstrath)       
--Big Boy  (Meirionydd)          -Hindenburg   (Pembroke)                          Clown (Gogarth)
-Wash Doubt ( Pembroke)             Kaya (ogwen)                The bells the bells    (gogarth)
      -Wolverine (Pembroke)              Braille Trail (Burbage)             -Demons of Bosch (gogarth)
             -Inferno (Bowderstone)                          -White Lines (Curbar)
-Wreath of deadly nightshade   (Gogarth)                         Black Lagoon (Pembroke)
    --Horizontal Pleasures  (Pembroke)                            -Broadchurch (gogarth)
Harmony (lleyn)             --Roof of the world (Pembroke)          -Isis is Angry   (gogarth)       
           Box of Blood (lleyn)            -I ran the bath (Vivian)           Yellow Shark (gogarth)
         -Apprentice (lleyn)                     Treacherous underfoot (Treaddur)            +Bam Bam  (lleyn)   
--Deep sea spex    (lleyn)          -Katies delight (Craig y Forwyn)                 -Surgical Lust (Llanberis pass)  
-Imminent departees (Craig Y Forwyn)       - -Balance it is (burbage)           +Peaceline (mournes)
         -We are all learning (mournes)
+The Great Escape (arran)           +Skye Wall  (coruisk)            -White House Wall (gogarth)
           -Divided Britain    (gogarth)               Stone Masonry   (gogarth)     
          +Combined energy (gogarth)
       Unfamiliar  (Stanage)                +Spirit Guide (lundy)
-Thug    (gogarth)                   -Road Rage (raven, thresthwaite)       
       Black Lagoon    (huntsmans)               Mercia wall  (Pembroke)         
  -Nesscliffe Monster (nesscliffe)                 Marlene Direct (nesscliffe)
       -Tombola (nesscliffe)             +Dawes of perception (Vivian)             
 +Cure for a sick mind (rainbow slab)              Flight of Ideas     (stanage)
      --Very big springs (Burren)                                Fuck the demagogues (Pembroke)
 
 

​   It’s only in more recent years I’ve really enjoyed doing new routes, preferring to do as much ‘good’ climbing as possible on existing climbs, but trying a new line and giving it a name does have a certain attraction.  A theme of mine in recent, admittedly mid-life crisis years has been naming some after raves such as The Royal Westing, Ulterior and Youtopia, in homage to the effort of the organisers. If anyone wants an escape from reality these parties have plenty to recommend them, and people who are happy in this reality are either strange, lucky or as my friend Will Perrin once said, stupid. A more recent theme has been on the environmental side or associated links.
  I’ve been extremely impressed with Greta Thunberg and her environmental movement she has helped to galvanise being the biggest ever recorded, bearing in mind she felt an ‘invisible girl’ in school. I called  a couple of routes after her and in March this year people from Extinction Rebellion contacted me asking if I’d do a video speaking about climate change. I told them I didn’t feel super comfortable about that but said I’d call a new climb after their movement. They seemed keen on the idea and made a video released in early April. The first comments on the video link I saw were negative and I had thought it was pretty cheesy myself but I clicked on the 2 individuals who made the comments and quickly saw the last few comments they made on things were denying climate change was even occurring. A sign of the times I suppose, but few things wind me up more and after a few brief interchanges we all had to block (a social media tool to clean up your feed when things get ugly) each other, partly as I’d threatened to track everything they did as what was very obviously ‘disinformation’  aka total bullshit. I have written a couple of articles on climate change for the BMC, one was called ‘Climb-it change’ and was looking to point people to good sources of info, the Metoffice, the IPCC and suggesting that if people have kids they should be doing something about it, with a list of 10 things people can do whilst also pointing out that we had 12 years to do so. A friend Chris Shepherd rightfully pointed out that my article was pointless as we are currently looking at worst case forecasts regarding global warming. The other article was about the Youth strikes for climate which were the biggest climate protests ever, conceived by Greta Thunberg.

​When the Extinction Rebellion protesters took to the streets of London I expected little, although a video on Roger Hallam, one of its founders was interesting, stating that non-violent civil disobedience had succeeded in the past where violent ones had failed and he said environmentalists had tried everything they could for the last 30 years and nobody had listened. It was about taking the capital, where the government was and directing people to the truth. That global warming was deadly serious. Watching the protests unfold and seeing grand parents and students getting arrested for the cause was very moving and when Scotland, Wales and then England declared a climate emergency I was blown away. This group who I’d presumed was a few half arsed hippies had done it. The reporting from the BBC during the early stages of the protests was appalling to say the least. Questioning the protesters on wether they thought it was ok to disrupt ‘innocent’ people’s lives the interviewers focused on the inconvenience when the science was saying we had a few years to make DRASTIC changes, and the government were focused on wasting energy on brexit. Rupert Read did an exceptional job of eloquently taking on the interviewers and some people who tried to shout him down who were funded by the fossil fuel lobby.  Extinction Rebellion are having another huge protest on the 7th October and I would urge anyone thinking about getting involved to do so.
  A common tactic of climate change deniers is to point to the carbon footprints of environmentalists or people getting involved in the activisms. I was concerned with this myself when the BMC shared the XR video link and a guy called Phil Oldham came on mentioning my helicopter ride to Lundy. I mentioned that aeroplanes up your carbon footprint loads because of the altitude the greenhouse gases get emitted and the 5 minute chopper flight wouldn’t have added up to much and that I mainly climb in the UK nowadays for environmental reasons. A little while later Phil comes onto my instagram account with a picture of Ray Wood next to said chopper. My alarm bells ring that Phil was out to discredit good environmental movements I’ve been involved with and after wasting 30 minutes of time engaging in a willy waving about who had the smallest carbon footprint I left with a feeling of high dislike. This smug self-righteous sniper was also involved in another small spat on UKClimbing still talking about the chopper and what I found most remarkable was that one of the dick weasels on the forum thought I should have been polite when they came across as a bunch of jealous wankers noshing on a weakly evidenced narrative.  I certainly wasn’t keen on taking one for the team of ‘pro-climbers’ just because the likes of Hazel and Leo were a pair of carbon criminals.

​ The fact of the matter is that changes need to come from government on a huge scale, showing the truth to the public about how serious climate change is, changing infrastructure on a wide scale and setting limits on energy use.
  I find it remarkable that many parents can’t be bothered to look into climate change and try to do something about it, it seems morally bankrupt (a rich statement from me you might say), so many friends are just pretty much ignoring it, pissing off on some skiing holiday or other, when in 20/30 years their children will have a much reduced quality of life if indeed things don’t get really screwed by then. But why not let the XR ‘plant pots’ and the kids do all the work and just you just carry on business as usual.
Some new routes I’ve had names lined up for already. That Nesscliff project I’d almost done when rebuilding my body from the raves and my wrist from the deckout. I was going to call it The Endarkenment before Ste (the greedy shit) Mac took it upon himself to do it because it had good gear and was much like a sport pitch missing a couple of bolts. As it turned out the slate quarries came up with the goods again with the groove systems left of Serpent Vein giving some bizarre and exposed climbing. The name is from a David Mitchell book, The Bone Clocks, looking at a dystopian future in the 2030s where science and facts are sneered upon. It catches the mood of the current times we are going through, where people take bollox as fact on a daily basis.
After a summer of being pretty unmotivated a new line on the slate got my keenness up again, a rockfall high in lost world had left a large, sheer diamond face and on an August evening with Lewis Perrin it was the best I’d climbed for months and it was one of the best technical face climbs I’d done in the UK. We named it The Fight Back after Carole Cadwalladr’s  crowdfunding campaign to take on Aaron Banks who is suing her for her journalism into his Vote Leave skulduggery.

​  The Great Hack is another new route I did with Lewis named after the Netflix movie which has Carole as a key player involved in looking into Cambridge Analytica and their use of weapons grade communication techniques for Vote Leave, Trump and some highly sinister contracts in other countries. It’s well worth a watch and in terms of climbing the new route it should become a modern classic offering very good punchy crack climbing and a gift at the grade.
The last new route was unexpected. I had a week off work and was meant to be on Lewis (sron ulladale) with Angus but he blew me out for some girl, this was probably for best as its true what many people say about him. This led to a trip to Pembroke with Ferdia and after a few esoteric routes we climbed a stunning new one up the outside of Huntsmans Leap. This starts up an easy corner 8 metres right of Star Wars before pulling straight over the roof, up a burly steep face above to arrive at the exposed and thankfully easier arête leading up to Star Wars for the last 2 metres. 

​After some consultation we decided on calling the new route, Fuck the demagogues. A finger up at the politicians who feed on people’s fears and prejudices. A guy called Dougy from Edinburgh was in Pembroke at the time and asked if I was writing any blogs anymore.
  So there you have some recent new routes and the links to what was thought about: Extinction Rebellion, The Endarkenment, The Fight Back, The Great Hack and Fuck the Demagogues. The fight Back and The Great hack have environmental links because they are against the Far right and for whatever reasons they have, the far right are willing to fuck planet earth completely in the next decade or two. With Trump making sure a generation of kids aren’t even taught about it being a threat.
   I was doing some chores in Bangor a couple of days later when 2 Tory campaigners were there touting their wares and dishing Labour for something or other (giving prisoners the vote mabe?). With a poster of Boris Johnson smiling behind him, a smartly dressed man in his 40s starts talking at me about Labour. After asking him quietly about having permission to be there a few seconds later I flipped out and went nuts at them both. On austerity and how it had effected some people near to me on a very personal level, on foodbanks, on brexit and how it was screwing the UK , on Boris’ and his rotten cabinet’s constant lies and waste. I remember seeing Adam Wilde flip out at someone in the mid 1990s in Keswick and people looked away, cringing. I could feel people around doing the same as I lay into these people who for me were campaigning for utter inhuman scum.  I eventually gained my self control and a nice old guy with a beard who was selling the big issue asked if I was alright.
I did feel alright. I was never going to be a Buddhist as they teach to do no harm whereas I sometimes took delight in inflicting it, warming my back to my woodburner, sipping wine with a warm smile (for instance when I learned Rab had actually had a team meeting about my special blog- so deserving). No, for all my mid-life crisis, anger and darkness I still felt I was alright.
    The right wingers who have climate change denying bastards like Nigel Lawson, Farage and Trump on their side aren’t alright. Mr and Mrs perfect who are ignoring climate change and taking their children on transatlantic holidays at the expense of their kids and grandkids futures aren’t alright. The shitfaces that are spreading fake news and tapping into peoples’ fears and dividing people aren’t alright. The gormless cretins who listen to the demagogues and supported them by doing or not doing something aren’t alright.
If you are doing something to try to make the world a better place you are alright. If you are just a nice person existing in the world, doing your thing while your lazy apathy allows the worst cretins in the world to take over, well fuck you, you pricks. Get involved.
 
 Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you’d like some counselling or coaching on developing a positive mental attitude please email: caffinspain@yahoo.co.uk
 
 
 
 

   It was good to see Adam again. He used to sell jewellery and do piercings on Keswick Market in the 90s and we hung out a lot together back then. He’s got the sharpest wit of anyone I've ever met and he helped instil a level of environmental awareness in my younger self although his constant comments taking the piss about me being from ‘the poorest family in Cumbria’ were wearisome.
   We were sat in the Caban café having lunch when he reminded me of the time him and Hocking had sandbagged me on Trilogy on Raven crag in Langdale when I was 16. Some people say I sandbag now and then but this was a different level with these sods telling me the main e5 pitch on Trilogy was the HVS Pluto. I was leading around HVS at the time and remember huffing and puffing and my big glasses glazing over with sweat whilst hearing the sniggering of my ‘friends’ on the periphery of my mind. I eventually managed to clip a thread at 20 foot before falling but looking back I wish I’d decked out on top of both of them.
  Adam took myself and several friends on our first trips to Wales in 1996/7, generally staying at Erics café campsite, with Adam knowing Eric from previous holidays and who is one of the greats of UK climbing, doing remarkable solos back in the day. These first trips involved lots of antics from barefoot solos, rescues, friends taking huge lobs, whiteys and a mannequin sacrificed down the Rainbow slab.  
   It was appropriate Adam had reappeared in my life as it was on the 1st trip to Wales I did my first route in the extreme rock book, Vector with Wez hunter and this year I was hoping to finish the last 7 which should be an achievable aim if my wrist continued to improve with my recovery strategy. On Vector I remember Wez hating the exposure on the traverse pitch and having to come back to the belay cave, I wore vector shoes that were way too tight and remember the pain and relief when I slipped them off at the top. Adam was also my partner on my most memorable extreme rock experience on Masters Wall where he was forced to save my arse and where the story struggles to come close to how lucky an escape it was.
   A few days before our Caban lunch I was ensconced a few metres from the top of my first new route of the year doing a fair amount of swearing. It was high up in the aptly named Mordor area of the slate quarries. I’d placed the bolts in the route the evening before, in the last 20 minutes of daylight and had almost not bothered placing the top bolt which would have been a truly dim move as the moves near the end are still tricky and without the top one you’d end up sailing back down most of the face if you fell. After a few more minutes the expletives won and Ferdia seconded having to do the last ten metres in the near dark.
   It was a better pitch than I’d expected and we named it after my main heroine, Greta Thunberg. Climate change is one of those big things everyone likes to ignore because it’s likely inconvenient to their lives and/or too big a deal to bother doing anything about. It is however a big elephant or bus in the room that few people want to look at, and painted on the side could be the words ‘your thoughtless decisions, apathy and lifestyles now are fucking your childrens future’.

   At age 16 this Swedish born young person who said ‘all my life I’ve been the invisible girl’ started a school strike on her own outside of the Swedish parliament in August 2018 for 3 weeks.  I didn’t think much of it at the time casting half an eye across the newspaper thinking that the Journalists in Sweden must be bored.
   Since then other youths have been inspired to take action and a global movement of climate protests which are involving hundreds of thousands of people and looking likely to increase to millions are up and running, getting the attention of world leaders and very importantly what she’s started is looking like it could make a big impact. Not bad for an invisible girl who suffered from depression at age 11 and was later diagnosed with Aspergers. Greta has made a ‘call to arms’ shout which has been answered.
  On the 15th March there will be more than 500 events listed across 51 countries worldwide, it’s worth checking out the map: https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/events/map. I’ll be joining the Manchester or Liverpool protest. The youth strikes which occurred on the 15th February were criticised by the UK government as wasting teachers’ time and how the young people should be learning to be engineers to tackle climate change. However Thunberg hit back at the Conservative government, saying on Twitter that political leaders had wasted 30 years by not taking action against climate change.

​The only debate on climate change in the UK in 2 years was on the 28th of February and only a handful of government MPs turned up with the debate itself being inspired by the school strikes. If anyone is in a position to support the young people going on the ‘Youth Strike 4 Climate’ I urge you to do so, many teachers are also joining the strikes and the bigger the protests are the more likely they are to have an impact.
Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at Manchester University had this to say about the youth movement “In just a few months a new global constituency has emerged, whose voices are loud and demands cogent. It’s up to the rest of us to listen to, engage with and then act for and with them. We owe them thanks for saying what most of us know, but have been too afraid to acknowledge”.
   Back to the realm of rock climbing there is another line next to Greta Thunberg which will be called the Invisible Girl. The day after climbing Greta Thunberg myself and Duncan Cunningham (the youngest of the exceedingly strong trio of Bros) climbed the pillar opposite, calling it Suck my karma. It isn’t the best new route I’ve ever done but if you look at it in the morning light I think the pillar of rock looks a lot like a huge version of my middle finger which I like to think is aimed towards much of the Tory party and any other spoiled chodes.

​   The 2 big pits, Lost World and Mordor are an incredible place to climb and have a lot of untapped rock, although admittedly with the recent rock falls in both quarries one should be careful. The best day I’ve had in these pits was climbing the 3 pitch new route ‘The Ticks Groove’ in 2013 with Alex Mason and Mark Reeves. It was named after Paul Williams who was a voracious ticker of guides by all accounts and who also wrote many guides for the area. To say he brought the climbs and their history to life would be an understatement and out of climbers from the past that I would have liked to have met he’d be top of the list. It would have been a contender for the best multi-pitch trad route in the quarries with a stunning long corner as the main pitch, but most of it fell down in 2015. If anyone is after slate new routes these 2 pits are the places to explore, carefully.

   Sat in the Heights to celebrate Nathan Pictor leaving to bike around the world I smugly drank camomile tea, feeling self-righteous and looking at my friends Emma, Bunney and Co like they were sad losers for boozing. In my mind I formed a pie chart of my various self-indulgent expenditures over the last year and was glad I’d be the only one to ever see it. Having burned the candle at both ends late last year I had ended up rather run down and it appeared time to get back on track, especially after a friend started to stare at me warily like they thought I was going to kidnap and sex traffic them somewhere.
    Niall was also becoming far too bold…my arch enemy in the office. As I was going to be involved with the Extinction Rebellion group but wasn’t too psyched on getting arrested I was thinking about a plan to use Niall. Maybe to drug him, dress him in a polar bear suit and lay him in the middle of the Princess road to stop the traffic getting into Manchester with some Environmental banners next to him….perhaps the next BMCTV episode.   
   Watching the new generation of super climbers competing in the Welsh Champs and CWIF has definitely got me motivated to try and get back to 2011/12 form, if that’s in a realm of possibility for an aging trad climber!
    It was certainly going to be payback time for James Williams who had done some amount of ribbing whilst my wrist was truly gammy…..so much payback Gaenz.
  I’ll be down LPT a lot from April to start chucking myself at Sea of Tranquility and hope to see Emma do her Big Bang mission. Rumour has it that Ben Bransby and Pete Robins are going to go head to head on trying to do the first ascent of the Top Dog, 9a project on the Diamond, perhaps there will be scenes like those of Robins and Dyer on Megalopa.
  Don’t forget to get yourselves along to one of the youth protests(all ages welcome) if you get the chance, 15th March with more lined up in mid-April and read up about Greta Thunberg, the invisible girl, a great story which is still unfolding.

    We’d had 30/40 mph winds for 4/5 days, the worst run of weather I’ve had on a UK trip. Having tried and failed to get onto Promised Land that morning due to tides and dampness I was now strapped onto the first few metres of Controlled Burning hoping to reduce the Extreme Rock routes down to 6. Getting committed past my first runner a small flake snaps and when my weight comes onto the rope the rock the wire was in also broke. I hit the deck and arrived crunched up under some boulders a few metres back from the base of the climb. I manage to squirm out with help from Georgia. My back spasmed and it took a minute or 2 to realise it wasn’t broken. On assessing a head cut my hair started to come out in clumps where a granite block and tomahawked the top of my head. My wrist and hand were starting to go into bulk and I was disgusted at myself for taking my first deckout in more than 20 years and scaring my partner. It didn’t look good and indeed Georgia stepped over into the sun and started to meditate.
 It was a fitting end to an already unlucky week with my mood matching the bad weather and Georgia having implied my duff karma was the reason for mishaps with the weather, vehicles and obviously the fall. Although I disagreed about my somewhat dark soul having effected my vans water pump or of bringing storm Ali over to Lundy I did think its heavier than normal weight (from pints of Lundy Light perhaps) might have helped the 2 bits of rock to break, placing my sorry arse down hard.
   Karma is not meant to be a punishment but rather a lesson to people who need to learn. Leaving Georgia to meditate I stumbled my rather beaten body out of the zawn before it had time to stiffen up and contemplated some of the key lessons I’ve learned from trad climbing.
​

1.       Build it up slowly: I’ve seen a lot of accident over the years with people who haven’t got their eye in for placing gear well. Start on climbs you have NO chance of falling off. There is quite a lot of things you need to be able to do well, from placing gear, moving confidently, getting acquainted with the grades, not having the rope around the back of your leg etc. This advice is certainly rich coming from me as I nearly spooned it on my first lead. Halfway up the realisation I was on the sharp end set in and I went to pieces and slipped off cats clawing down a slab before my feet caught on a foothold and I stopped. Dad was belaying and justifiably cursing me for having been fool enough to jump on it without being ready for it.        On another occasion on Dinas Cromlech my friend Adam Hocking climbed Right Wall and having found it easy (he was onsighting 8a+ at the time) talked a chap into trying it who had climbed a few E3s. He put in a valiant effort, arriving at the jugs beyond the port hole unfortunately he lacked the energy to hold onto them. I was halfway up True Grip on the opposite face when his grip gave out. With a blood curdling scream he took flight, some gear unclipping from the rope and heading towards the scree. He was in the foetal position for much of the fall and just stopped before the ledges at the base of the climb.
 2.       Get 2 bits of pro between you and the deck asafp: You know what the f stands for there. I’ve seen afew people deck out who only have 1 piece in (don’t say it), sometimes from the belayer being too far out, giving a shit directional pull in a fall. Get the belayer close in but not underneath you if the start is poky/wire reliant low down. Try and keep at least 2 runners between you and the deck when above. I’ve seen people shove in microcams a long way apart then getting into difficulties above where they were reliant on them holding to stop them being on the deck from high up. Get some normal wires in if you can. I often place a cam next to a wire to try and make the cam stop the ropedrag from effecting the wire placement.
3.       Confidence and calm: Normally built up from experience on lots of climbs and having the knowledge of what you are letting yourself in for and of your own ability at that point. Confidence might be the biggest asset there is for trad climbing, along with keeping calm and making good decisions quickly. Most people will have at some point in their climbing ‘lack of confidence’, where they don’t want to climb into the unknown. Having climbed into the unknown a few times and not always liked what I’ve found there I can tell you backing off if you are not feeling ‘it’ is no bad thing. If you feel you just have ‘the fear’ though and are backing off when realistically it’s safe to carry on, just tell yourself you will find a good hold and gear not too far beyond, as usually you do. Don’t sue me if you go for it and you find neither. If you are tired or having a shit time of it in life I’d recommend saving the bolder leads for another day.

4.       Helmets: Wear 1. I was brought up in a culture of not wearing one, dad, friends and soloing. My friend Ryan doesn’t wear one because he likes people to be able to see his haircut, pure vanity. The best way of not having to test them is not to walk or climb under other climbers who can be the ones to pull off a loose rock or block. It seems pretty obvious that a small rock falling a few meters onto your helmeted head could mean you dust yourself off and head to the pub but the same rock landing on you without a helmet can be a life changing event or death. As well as protection against falling rocks they are also handy when you are bouncing backward through granite blocks having your head shaved by them. Should the worst case occur and you lose half your brain the only silver lining is you’ll still beat Georgia at scrabble (this will never grow old).
5.          Endurance: Jesus it can be slow on some trad routes. So slow. Build up as much endurance as you can and quit smoking. Like many endurance activities a lot of the battle will be mental rather than physical. The best possible mental training for endurance is to spend time with people who are both vegan and Buddhist, they are all killjoys.
6.       Aerobic: A big pitch on trad might take you an hour or more to lead, and on some of the bigger cliffs it could be 2 hours walk in with a heavy bag. Then you are bridging, recovering in shit rests, nearly always on your feet. Running and general fitness stuff can help out on trad climbs a ton. Quit smoking.
7.         The comfort zone: As mentioned in lesson 1, newbies should try and keep within the comfort zone for some time before exploring or expanding its edges. For very experienced climbers though it’s when you are well within the comfort zone that many and possibly most dangers lie. How many good climbers do you know of who have hurt themselves or died on routes that are very easy for them. It’s easy to switch off, not place enough gear, become too blasé. Much like people crashing on a road they know well near where they live. In some arenas they call this a Heuristic trap.  In fact I think my fall hits most elements of a heuristic trap; over-commitment to a goal, familiarity with the terrain, scarcity, social proof (tony stone had done it the week before).
   The best case if you have an accident and survive is that your climbing partner will pass you a Buddhist book of proverbs open on ‘Nowness’: An arrogant and proud woman was keen on seeking enlightenment and got told to climb a high mountain top to find the cave. On arriving in the cave she finds an old wise woman and gets down on her knees asking for enlightenment. The old woman asks if she is sure she wants enlightenment? After she is given the confirmation the old woman turns into a demon and starts to whack the woman with a stick shouting ‘now, now, now’.
 
You may find this patronising but being lame are left with the only option of trying to incinerate the patroniser with your gaze.
 
Don’t get caught out when you are well within your comfort zone.
 

8.       Young people: Have 3-4 times more road accidents than older drivers, some of the causation is over-confidence, feeling ‘invincible’, poor assessment of hazards, taking unnecessary risks (and right hand turns). With this in mind if you are a young person who trad climbs I recommend making sure your ego doesn’t write any cheques your body can’t handle, at least not on any bold routes.  
9.       Self rescue: Anybody going sea cliff climbing where your abseiling into cliffs its worth being able to do a few things. Principally ascending a rope using a couple of prussiks. If you’ve misjudged the tide or your partner hurts themselves getting back up the abseil rope to get help might be the only option. If you fall off into ‘space’ seconding it’s unlikely your partner will be able to hoist you so it might save your bacon there too. If you’re going to be in more remote areas then being able to escape the system with your harness is also worth knowing as is being able to do a tandem abseil.  If your partner gets injured on a sea cliff and you don’t know anything about what I’ve mentioned above your unlikely to be their hero, just shout for help, or meditate.

10.       Stiff boots!: You can smear in an edgy pair of boots but you can’t edge very well in a smeary pair! 2 is better than 1, even Hazel can do that sum. On trickier routes that you are on for more than 20 minutes that are a bit edgy if you’ve got your smeary boots on you better have a set of extremely well toned calves. If anyones heading for the slate this is imperative!
11.       Quick pro: God some people are slow as shite at placing kit. It looks like they just whack the wires against the wall expecting 1 to slot in somewhere. Get good at putting it in fast and well, practice on the deck a fair bit first. Aim for cams to be more over-cammed than under-cammed to stop them walking/flicking out as easily. It can often be the most stressful part of a climb and there may well be moments in your climbing where your life is very much reliant on the speed you can fire an ok runner into a rockface.
12.       Cutting it close: Or pushing the boat out, perhaps on a climb which is a harder grade than you’ve done before. People see unexpected gains as having twice the worth as gains they expect to get. So it can feel good having the uncertainty element thrown in there. I’ve seen a lot of climbers over the years going for their ‘big lead’ and quite often you can tell before they’ve set off how it’s going to go. It’s always great to watch when someone is throwing absolutely everything they have into a climb, wether or not they get up it. They’ve decided to Carpe Diem and when you are really keen and switched on it can make you into a different climber. Be sure you’ve assessed everything you can about the climb from the ground before setting off, and be ‘en guard’!. It’s often the first bits, when you are near the ground which are the most dangerous, same indoors incidentally with most deckouts around the 1st-3rd clip.
13.       Mental Health: I’ve lost more friends who climb to suicide than to climbing, they’ve often been climbing pretty well at the time but admittedly their behaviour showed some of the warning signs of depression in the months leading up to their deaths. It’s worth keeping an eye out for your friends if they start doing things they wouldn’t normally do.
    Will Perrin was one of the best rock climbers the UK has seen. I remember telling him that the first pitch of Conan the Librarian was tough before he proceeded to make it look piss. I’d been to Hendre Hall the night before and arriving at the crux groove wearing all our clothes the breeze had died and the sun baked me. He had put no runners in the traverse and said his belay wasn’t that good. Sweating profusely and with a dry hungover mouth I got the fear and remember shouting and swearing at him as he smiled back.
14.       Great places & people: It can take you to some really stunning places, sometimes not that far away. I’ve been to Yosemite, Madagascar, Patagonia but when I get back to Gogarth, Fairhead, Pembroke or Lundy it feels as good as anywhere really. Trips to Dubh Loch, Skye and Lewis are also hard to beat. As I’ve stated many times I think in many respects North Wales is a contender for the best or one of the best trad climbing venues in the world (for smaller clmibs obvs). By and large most climbers I’ve met have been pretty sound too, apart from Andy Kirkpatrick with him being both a Trump and Kavanagh supporter-chodes.


I’m sure there were loads of other lessons I could have thought of but I was kind of sick of the talk about karma and if anyone mentioned it to me in the near future I’d use what imagination I had to send them a suitable lesson when they least expected it, even after I got told off all week about the Buddhist teaching of causing no harm.
  I’d given the Extreme Rock routes priority one for the year and there were still 7 left: Revelations, Promised Land, Controlled burning, The Clearances, Megaton, Scansor and Unicorn. I actually felt pretty good, I’d broken the back of it and the Lundy fall might have been the luckiest I’d taken, it certainly appeared to be a life changer in the 1st few minutes. I tried to think of any good deeds I’d done to warrant such good luck..…I was certainly struggling. Perhaps it was that time we woke Niall in the middle of the night…I’d need to do some more research into this karma thing.
Thanks to anyone who climbed and put up with me this year. Next year, I’ll put it to bed, or die trying.
Trips for any friends next year are 3 days in the Burren then onto the Fairhead meet from there and 10 days on Lewis in early August, Sron Ulladale then the sea cliffs. There might be a free ticket to Lundy in late March if anyone is keen too!
  
 
 

   One of the best quotes regarding peoples’ attitude towards the environment that I’ve heard is from David Mitchell in the Peep Show.
​
“if we don’t like the evidence we are seeing why not just ignore it, like the environment”.
 
 I used to see myself as environmentally minded, trying to minimise consumption of fossil fuel use, waste, heat and even giving lectures at Plas Y Brenin for a while on the risks of climate change, I used to love depressing people given the chance. The talk would look at the IPCCs (inter-governmental panel on climate change) predictions, the Stern report (2006) was just out giving a very similar outlook. Big changes in weather pattern distribution, increased extreme weather events, displacement of many millions of people. It was a rotten old list. Nigel Lawson brought out a ludicrous programme called the Great Climate swindle at the time saying it was solar flares but the Met office disagreed quite strongly with this idea. That the guy was chancellor is a fact I find quite disturbing as I doubt he based his decisions on any evidence.
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  At some point in time, and I can’t be certain when it occurred I did exactly what David Mitchell said regarding the environment and just started to ignore it. Hedonism at its best, flights left right and centre, rarely sharing a lift so I can play decomposed tecno at full volume, buying any shit without any thought for where it was sourced. Those grand ideas of ‘inter-generational equity’ and the ‘precautionary principle’ (the idea of not causing harm to the environment which will effect future individuals) really had gotten blown out of my diesel exhaust.
   There was a pretty condemning experience I had in the not too distant past! To contrast myself with my friend Glyn Hudson who is probably the climber I most admire for the environmental ethic he carries with him at all times. Such a good egg. I follow Glyn on the usual social media channels and he puts on his electric car journeys; levels of convenience, cheapness, a kind of 'how to' guide.
   He is an electrical engineer and him and his physicist friend Trystan Lea have a company called Megni  and the open energy monitoring project. My only environmental investment to date has been into this company as I’ve never met anyone as dedicated to promoting positive changes by leading a modern life whilst having a low impact. One of the best journeys I’ve heard him do is to get to China on the train to meet one of his component suppliers.
Glyn, you are my hero, although it would be nice to try and get you to tap into your inner bastard at some point, there must be one in there somewhere.
 I mentioned earlier I’m not sure when I fell so far from what used to be part of my ‘principles for existing’. It’s very easy to be myopic in life (short sighted, which as I used to be -5.5 in both eyes I can tell you a bit about), but I don’t really want to use ‘living in the moment’ as a substitute phrase for just being a thoughtless twat. Its impressive how very clever people can become dense, perhaps with info overload, like a singularity of stupidity. They make actions now whilst paying no heed to the effect they have in the future, feigning naivety.
    Imagine that you could increase your energy efficiency by 20% right now, today! I bet a ton of people could do that with next to no impact on their quality of life. Over the course of 20 or 30 years how much less CO2 is being pumped into the atmosphere for that person alone. It’s that volume over time where peoples habits really add up. ​

  The most profound question I’ve ever been asked was in a staff appraisal by Martin Chester, he said: “where do you see yourself in 5 years time”. It blew me away because I’d never ever thought about looking that far ahead and I can tell you it is worth doing.
   Written goals are considerably more likely to occur than unwritten goals, the more detailed and process based they are the more likely they are to come about. What do you want to be doing work or life wise and what do you need to do to get there. Scribble something down for gods sake.
 
  I’ve been extremely fortunate to enjoy time with friends in some of the most beautiful environments you can find. When I blagged Laser eye surgery it meant I could visit Patagonia with too tall Tim Neill, seeing the huge crazy snow mushrooms on top of the granite towers and feeling that god awful wind off the ice cap. We eventually got that controversial CAC calendar up Domo Blanco.
    Madagascar is probably the most romantic landscape I’ve been to, being full of very strange critters and overshadowing in its own way even the great Yosemite Valley where John Muir found a landscape he thought deserved preserving for future generations to experience.
I didn’t actually want to go to Madagascar. I’d been invited by Jack Geldard and thought it was going to be a waste of money. Arriving at Antananarivo with fatboy and Pitchfork we made a 15 hour journey south towards the 3000 foot granite domes of Tsaranoro with the longest and most impressive electrical storms I’ve seen going on around us for hours. Every day you’d see a creature you’d never encountered elsewhere, chameleons, lemurs, zebu. It became quickly apparent that to visit Madagascar was not only not a waste of money but a truly priceless experience.​

Obviously the landscapes mentioned above pale in comparison with time spent in the greatest valleys on earth….Borrowdale and the Llanberis Pass. Christ, I’ve had a lot of great times with friends in these valleys, climbing and larking about.
 I look around at my nephews, nieces, the kids on the youth meets and the students who come on the seminar and hope that they can have similar opportunities to enjoy the great landscapes I’ve experienced with their friends.
  Heading up to Skye in 2016 with Dan Varian we had a related conversation about how long we can carry on just driving and flying about everywhere. The trip was unfortunately cut short as although fast on the fingers and arms Dan was too slow on the pedals and crashed the van the 3rd day of the trip. I obviously have absolute faith that Trump and his A-team will lead the world into a low carbon, clean energy world in the near future.

   A young friend I was chatting with the other day was doing some work in sustainable housing and made me think about what I could do. Ignoring the environment is morally pretty bankrupt as I spent years looking at the catastrophic consequences which I’m partly accountable for, as are you. The consequences appear to be on the doorstep.
    I regularly go to a café in Appleby with mum and I asked if they’d been flooded before. They’d had to redo the whole café 3 times in the last decade. Jesus, I thought, do you just keep doing that?
A book called the Bone Clocks by David Mitchell had a good phrase for the mad max style future which could be seen by ignoring the looming crisis.
‘The Endarkenment’
 (I’ve dibs on this for a new route name)
The anti-science brigade do seem to be having a fine old uprising the last few years, with Goves comments about people having had enough of the experts being both poignant and dangerous.
     My friend who inspired me into this ‘environmental rant’ said they try to be nice and not push things on people too much as a good way of doing things. I knew I was screwed there but think anyone with an interest in it should start reading up, helping or else start building an ark.​

   I thought about what I would do. I would take some money sat in that bank doing fuck all and invest it somewhere useful. I would find someone who likes loud tecno to share a lift with them. I’d do what that dickhead Norman Tebbit said to do and get on my bike. I would only eat meat once a week. Veganism, like Tinder just wasn't going to happen for me, I didn't want to end up looking like Dan or using naff lines like 'what do you like about Sheffield' (Oli G, 2017).
    When someone starts harping on about some little bit of erosion somewhere I’d shut them up immediately and start telling them about some serious environmental problems to start putting their brains into solving. What would Stevie do?
​ I'd get the best minds in the BMC onto the case, Niall could keep us topped up with tea.
   I’d troll those wankers like Nick Bullock and Hazel Findlay every time they step off a flight from Nepal about the size of their carbon footprint. I guess if my sleep deteriorated any more I could form an underground army like Edward Norton in Fight Club, there was plenty of room in the slate quarries to station it. The CCCC, Cumbrian Climate Change Crew, what were those drugs they used to give soldiers to keep them going?
 
Podemos were right. We can do it.
 
I looked at the viewcounter for my website. The impact wasn't looking good.

 There was my sister, Heather, always supportive. Shit, my mums been reading this. Niall Grimer, ha, always there, lurking, he’d be in the BMC office nervously looking over his shoulder wondering when I’d appear to inflict revenge. I doubt it will hurt him for too long. Some people tell you 2 wrongs don’t make a right but I can tell you they are religious types who will therefore swallow anything. As we all know, 2 wrongs make an even, which is both fair and square and always the best bit of any story. Ahh, that lazy git Bransby was there too, I didn't think he could read. Only 4 people.
 
​Well, you have got to start a change somewhere.

​It will do for a memo to myself for now.     
 
 
 
 
 
 
​

   There is the balance that gets talked about in some forums nowadays, between being a good ‘athlete’ and being good at marketing or social media. Sponsorship being seen in most circles as being attributed to a person for being good or great at an activity and/or helping companies sell their products via marketing. If individuals have 10s or 100s of thousands of followers on Instagram+ some companies will want to associate their products with them, potentially giving them free stuff or money and free stuff with some kind of contract to oblige them to throw the free shit onto their media feed or say how great it is. I think the term is ‘influence’. The more followers/disciples you have the better.
 I’ve been seen in the past as a crap ‘sponsee’ and some ‘cyber-wankers’ comments recently made me think it was a good opportunity for doing some serious slagging and putting forward some general thoughts about the era of climbing and sponsorship which we live in. As I didn’t want any potential sponsor to be put off by criticisms of my social media and general ethos regarding climbing promotion stuff.
   Anonymous ‘cyber wanker’ said how he didn’t know who sponsored me and that it was my fault. They said I had shit pictures and was clueless about all things social media which is why Rab decided to part company with me. Now, I’d generally not take any cyber-wanker seriously because there are a lot of unbelievably clueless people who will enjoy voicing an opinion about something they have no expertise in whatever.
​

  I’m reasonably old school in my thinking in that I like to mainly chat about things I think are interesting or newsworthy rather than sending forth a constant stream of human consciousness which the modern era of social media can become. I think I’d argue the point with some of the marketing moguls who have started to take a hand driving parts of the outdoor industry who value quantity of posts people make over quality which is what I’ve seen in some of the sponsorship contracts people have which don’t appear too enviable.
I think it’s also worth questioning wether some elements of the new social media frenzy which have become prevalent are very healthy. Leo Houlding once said ‘the modest man goes hungry’ and it appears this has gone from a slogan for the odd extremely skilful individual to become the ethos for a large % of the sponsored climbing community. I know it appears unhealthy enough that the parents of the best youth sport climbers the UK has seen don’t want their kids involved with it and many other parents in similar position questioning wether they even want their child to be sponsored.
​

How sponsorship works with my current sponsors is that sometimes I may do something of interest, maybe its onsighting 3 e7s in a day, maybe a new route in a cool place or an e9 after a quick ab, whatever.
 It gets on some news platforms, ukc, Climber magazine. Perhaps a photographers been on hand such as my friend Ray Wood (I never climb harder than 5c less he’s there with his camera). I’ll be wearing my sponsors kit, maybe they’ll make a poster and a news story for facebook or twitter. I’m no bear grylls so the amount of attention it will receive will be rather limited but either way when I send the links and pics through to Pedro Pons he makes me feel appreciated and Bransby is a mate and pretty clueless so I can get away with anything with him and although he’s meant to be team captain he seems to leave me to organise most of the DMM trips!
   I’m not totally clueless about social media, after all I need to sometimes spread the news about BMC youth events I’m running and after that brexit vote I was forced to up my game. I was trying to hound UKIP and with the spats I had Ray showed me how I could block people to help me keep my feed that bit cleaner. I never got the # gamblingwithchlidrenslives tag into a proper campaign but I’m a more experienced practitioner now.
   So back to Rab. I don’t mind saying I do have a bit of bad blood here. The marketing manager did say how they would be keeping me on but a couple of weeks later I received that classic ‘standardised’ and rather patronising email obviously sent to loads of other people. Even after I’d chipped part of my soul away for them wearing those bloody awful red trousers on loads of new routes, jesus what was I doing?
​

3rd times the charm they say.
 I still remember in 2000 as a 19 year old feeling invincible, I guess that’s why the insurance is so high for that age category. The first half on Indian Face had felt pretty easy, I’d failed to find the critical rock 6 as indeed it doesn’t even look like a wire slot and had put on 2 hooks there instead.
After a few tough sequences leading up right to get stood up in semi balance on crimps I thought I was ‘in’, a small amount of euphoria started to arrive. Unfortunately the handholds went dry, just having those ‘only for balance’ type hand holds. The move was obvious, put your left foot high onto a small edge and spring for what was hopefully an edge above. I was pretty baked from the effort so far and could see the feet went shit beyond. Half an hour of failing to progress via any possible option and the invincibility had worn off with the pain of reality soon to become the biggest epic I’d ever had in climbing dangerous routes. I think the sun had hit me before I’d realised I’d have to drop the ropes and it was 2 hours or so later before the ropes, 2* 9mm’s tied together got thrown blindly from Adam Wilde out over Cloggy to rescue my absolutely fucked body and mind from the clutches of the black cliff. 
   The situation had been horrendous for both of us, he was looking at having a teenage kid die on him and I had assumed for some length of time I was going to die as my tendons had been ebbing away in a really terrifying manner.  I also knew my family would be devastated and I knew it was stupid. I remember thinking so fast about everything. Everything I wouldn’t ever be able to do. I was so sure I was a dead man. I’d pleaded with every god I could think of for a miracle and tbh when I sailed down to near the base of Vember on that line it did feel like I’d received one.
In 2013 I did Indian Face and felt I’d layed this to rest somewhat but I guess I hadn’t treaded in Moffats footsteps so to speak , Just Dawes’ and hadn’t climbed through my dread zone.
 The next attempt on what is Masters Wall happened solely because the route is named in Ken Wilsons Extreme Rock book! That’s the only reason. With Ken passing away not long ago I thought it would be good homage to his brilliant books to try and ‘tick’ the last 1.
    When you abseil down Masters wall you realise it is profoundly dangerous and risking your life for a puerile tick (Tony Stones words) would get you the Darwin Award should the worst case happen, and the nature of the moves mean that the worst case could easily happen unless you are trying quite hard and up for a fight.
My partner was Ferdia who I first met at the Works party in Sheffield. Her 1st sentence when we met was to ask if I’d be dancing in a cage at dempsies the following night, I figured after enough drinks it could have happened. We’d agreed on going on a climbing trip to Scotland together and this was a test day to see if climbing in Scotland was prudent. After doing Jelly Roll I thought I’d have a punt. The first 10 metres above the overlap has never felt as easy as when I was 19 and I was cursing my younger self, the little shit. At 13/14 metres the main wire, a sideways hex looked totally shit when I put it in, it blatantly wouldn’t hold a lob and if you fluffed 1 of the many higher 6b moves it could be taking a 15 metre+ lob and apart from some shit hooks would be your lifeline before the deck.  
The next best wire on the critical midriff is halfway up indian face, an offset RP1 before you break right into sustained and dodgy moves. The little bastard wire wouldn’t go in on my first few efforts and my feet felt in bulk. There was a strong feeling that I was doomed to die on this fucking route and justifying it at this point was proving difficult, I slung on a shit hook and did a scary lower. My bloody onsight effort was considerably higher than my ‘headpoint’ effort. This was my bogey route.
We did Daurigal, a brilliant E3 left of Great wall and once on the ground I asked Ferdia if she fancied a brew in beris. She mentioned how she was keen to try Midsummer Nights dream. Earlier in the day she’d said she probably wouldn’t climb and that she felt shit. I told her that it was great she was going to try it but secretly thought we were going to be in for another bloody epic.
Starting up Midsummers, Ferdia proceeded to make a fast and super smooth lead on the bold pitch! Scotland was looking optimistic.
 That evening in conversation via messenger with Emma I told her with some passion that this route was just so fucking dangerous. It can be tricky getting pepped up for serious routes at the best of times and I have to say if you think your destined to die on a climb it doesn’t make it easier. 
We pissed off to Scotland soon after and I was looking forward to doing routes with gear good enough to lower off without being backed up by a shit hook.
We had a fantastic trip. I put up some pictures up on facebook to ensure some people who had already told me they were jealous about coming on the trip were even more jealous. God how I laughed about this imagining their facial expression, almost as funny as keeping Niall awake all night for his immensely hairbrained idea that I’d like to be filmed wearing a bear suit. He saw the funny side…some months later.
We were both tired at the start of the trip. Myself due to the Night Kitchen party in Sheffield and Ferdia seemed to think she had Lymes Disease although I believed it may have been Lazy-itis but it would have been rather hypocritical of me to express this with the amount of time off I’d been having.
After some chilly days on some small outcrops (although still considerably bigger than most cliffs found in the Peak area) we made the hike into Dubh Loch. Christ my bag felt like it weighed a ton. After making base on the beach on the loch we strapped it onto Naked Ape. A route I’d wanted to do for 20+ years, being put up by Lakes extraordinaire, Pete Whillance. It didn’t disappoint. Ferdia made rapid work on the first pitch. The rib on the 2nd pitch was poky and I got Ferdia to change position in case I landed on her. The move to gain the arete I thought may bump it up to E6 as well but I could be going soft. Ferdia wore every down jacket we had with us to 2nd and looked like a zorb. The 3rd pitch was highly deceptive and Ferdia did a storming lead on it with a slo-mo mantle at the end which must have felt like a lifetime.
​

So it is
 70 metres long, with a tough and intimidating first half and at around 35-40 metres you’ve got ten metres of arete climbing with a lot of moves around 6b/c which are on the wilder side with a drop zone Ricky had mentioned could be down much of the Rathlin wall. It made it even better that it was Rickys route, someone who has blown me away with his terrifying and novel looking new routes in great settings all over the place.  
 I’d clocked it was going to be a sandbag and on arriving at the base and looking up at it I immediately gave up on trying it without an inspection. If Ryan had been there I would have sent him up for a laugh to check out the flight paths and test some gear. My first lead effort felt a real calamity.
​

 
   I’d been to Fairhead for a week in 2010, 2011 and a day with Swaily in 2014. It’s one hell of a cliff, certainly a contender for the best of its type. John Orr has always organised the trips. The 2010 one had shit weather but we still did loads as it dries so quick, I remember having about three 3 hour belay stints on a hanging belay with a northerly wind and losing cards for washing up the pan a load of us had cooked sausages in, I got hot aches. Chris Guest and Luke Brooks made up the rest of the team and Sean the farmer took pity on us all being the only ones camping in his field and brought us some beers.  The 2011 trip was the windiest conditions I’ve ever climbed in but again was a great week with one of the highlights watching Ian Small onsight an E7 called Styx having had to sit out the rain for ages and let it dry when he was on a shelf halfway up. The one day with Swaily he managed an impressive piss hanging on the end of the traverse on the E6 Above and Beyond before continuing up the headwall, the first time I’ve seen that kind of thing managed.
  This trip had once again been sorted by John Orr and with Tim Neill in tow we headed out for the Fairhead meet which must have had 250-300 climbers in the field. The great Calvin Torrance was there new routing and offering advice and calum gave a great talk with the best climbing footage I’ve ever seen of him truly scraping up Kaluza Klein-unbelievable.
 We all had particular objectives this trip unlike the previous visits. John wanted to do The Complete Scream, Tim was keen for Hells Kitchen arete and I was on to try Rathlin effect.
  The first day we arrived we all went abseiling, John to clean Seabhac, Tim HK arete and me a possible new route which unfortunately wasn’t going anywhere.
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  One thing I don’t like about hard routes is that you can’t do as much climbing as normal but on the bright side if you make it up them it does feel good and even trying them is kind of good fun (type 2 perhaps). Abseiling down Rathlin effect for the first time felt fairly epic, having to climb sideways for several metres at one point before getting scared and pumped trying to get a runner in whilst looking at the edge on the roof your rope will be see sawing across should you fail.  After abbing it twice I was bolloxed and needed a rest day.
A day eventually arrived when I could try it. I’d had 2 brand new 70 metre ropes sterling had given me stashed in a cave and when I got ten metres up John said one was cored. I couldn’t believe it and was convinced a rat had been at it. After sorting a new rope strategy I set off on my calamitous go. To get to the nest of gear at 20 metres is the easy part of the route that I thought to be E6/7 and the traverse left from here is what I wasn’t looking forward to having some of the hardest moves on the route and a reasonable runout. I was chuffed to get through the traverse to a jug at the lip and ok-ish cam right on the lip of the roof. When Ricky did it he missed out this cam which would mean facing a real pearler of a lob. From here a lunge left leads to a wild layback and the main rest on the route.
Feeling pretty confident I set up for the lunge and realising I wasn’t getting anywhere near the distance required I knew I was in trouble. The move off an ab rope feels very different after 30 metres of climbing.  Ricky was there to egg me on but after 10 minutes of trying to rest in a shit position with intermittent chucks for the arete and lots of swearing I was totally cooked and gutted I had to do the intimidating traverse again. After abbing back down to reassess that move me and John did Seabhac which gave me my first pitch of climbing at Fairhead on this trip on day 5!
The next day whilst I was having a properly chummy rest day in Ballycastle Tim was at the other end of the spectrum laying the demons (put there by a Cumbrian) to rest by climbing Hells Kitchen arete. During the Fairhead meet a climber had taken a huge fall off Hells Kitchen itself, falling 20 metres onto his belayer then another 20+ metres to near the ground. After being airlifted off they were fortunate to be out of hospital a few days later.
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  The 2nd to last day I was keen to give Rathlin Effect one more go, after warming up on the top half on my grigri things didn’t look optimistic with crampy lats from the calamitous go. Ricky and John gave me a pep talk and this time the new sequence worked for the lunge and after a good breather at the resting foothold the next half of the route still felt a fight all the way. Rick was at the top when I arrived to offer congrats amongst other needs. I told him the truth, that it was the best and the wildest pitch I’d ever climbed. Abseiling down the other side of the arete to get down I gave another of his routes a cursory glance, the Big Skin and I can confirm that this also looks like a sandbag at the grade.
   Kris Mcoey and Tim had managed a new route, Blackout which Kris had knocked himself out whilst cleaning on a prior trip. We celebrated that night in Johns yellow trafic van, John, Tim, Kris, Liz, Leon, Heather, Aggie, Kelly +. There really were some great tunes being played.
  The last day was Johns day. The Complete Scream, I remember him eyeing it up in 2010 on our first visit. I abbed into the belay first and on arriving there was chuffed to be getting 4G. I started streaming James Williams’ set from the Youtopia party straight away. Once John arrived at the belay I knocked it off to let him find his ‘zen’.
As he set off with his hooks and gaffer tape I prayed that he wouldn’t be coming back down to land on me like the poor lad belaying on Hells Kitchen a few days previously.
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He romped steadily through the crux and after a brief word with himself mid crux he gained the better gear and I knew what he was thinking, his catchphrase…’so it is’.
We finished on the amazing corner of Conchubair before guinesses on the ferry back to Holyhead. We all promised to be at the Fairhead meet again next year.
Good skills John, Tim, Kris and the Fairhead party crew. But also bloody great sandbagging Ricky.
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It was one of the more lethargic starts to a trip that we’ve had.
On the first day I set off up Earthsea Trilogy, an E6 on the right and on getting halfway it finally dawned on me that the crack with the pegs in was missing along with a big part of the cliff. Emma and Maddy checked out Once Upon a Time in the South West before the sun stopped play at 16.00.
On the Sunday OUAT has a queue on it. Emma and Maddy work out where it goes and some of the gear and I send Ryan up for the big flash effort. He looked solid for a while but it became apparent that it wasn’t piss and he started flapping a bit, it didn’t look good. Placing some microcams off a full Pasquil lock he came back down.
The next day I’m up and getting to a similar point as Ryan start to flap as well, I had my fingers in a slot which would have taken a good small cam but after some panicked efforts to replace my fingers with a cam I parted company with no success and Fred Halls warning of not relying on what I was about to lob onto.
Our highpoint on our flash effort seemed pretty low to me (it was) so I gave up and abbed down Walk of life. I was glad I didn’t try this one ground up as I don’t think I would have gotten anywhere but was confident Ryan would get through the start with a bit of beta, I’d get him beers for a week if he got through the upper bit onsight though.
Me and Emma took a rest day on Tuesday and Maddy went and dutifully belayed Ryan on his ground up effort, getting to the base of the crux.
Wednesday arrived and having done jack shit our departure day felt like it was looming. After abseiling Walk of Life again I was made up not to fluff the upper cruxes and had to shake my feet out loads from the 30 meter mark. What a pitch.
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​Emma was up next and with all the microcams, RPS and sliders she had to carry for a 50 meter E9 she looked like a Christmas tree. She seemed nervous on the loose but piss start and I was worried she had no hope but as soon as she hit the hard climbing she proceeded to ‘walk’ up all the main difficulties.  Having climbed with Emma since she was 12 years old, belayed her on her 1st E1 and had several epics together over the years it was great to see her make an E9 look easy. I took a look at the route afterwards and was blown away by the quality of the rock and climbing, the quite cheesy video of hazel on it made it look a bit naff but it was the opposite. I think it might be better than the one to the right.
We celebrated a bit that night. Emma, Maddy and Ryan are dead nice so it was great having Ray on the trip for a good slagging session. Ray got it started about someones Instagram account doing his head in but very soon I was laying into everyone. People in North Wales, Sheffield, Chamonix….if you are reading this I was probably talking about you at some point. Admittedly Bransby took more flack than anyone else having bailed on the trip last minute. If he wasn’t careful he risked no longer being my perfect partner, after all, Ryan, Emma and Dan were all in tears that it was him rather than them.
He is replaceable.  I was confident no one had ever had reason to slag me off because my friend Pete Robins had told me recently that I was a person with NO faults.

The following day was to be our last at Dyers Lookout much to Rays disappointment. Ryan had gotten through the crux moves after 1 rest on gear but was too rinsed to try again. I put this down to having lain in the sun for hours each day with no suncream on. He thinks because you can’t see the UV it can’t do you any harm.
Maddy gave me dibs for a go on OUAT and after abbing to check the 2 crux moves and gear I gave it a pop. Where Walk of Life had been a slick operation this route did have a particular ‘shitfest’ moment of terror.
I’d had to climb quite quickly to the rest above the 2 cruxes as my feet were pretty baked. The runnel I’d been up once the day before and dismissed as steady was about to come back and haunt me at the most runout point, having latched a good quartz hold I was dismayed to be getting really pumped on it. Rocking left I eventually lifted my right foot onto the quartz but a fall was feeling probable. After a few more moments of feeling I was coming off backwards and upside down a long way lady luck stepped in (I kind of doubt it was karma) and I got my arse over the foothold and eventually the top.
 Maddy was up next, having not been put off by my shit show. She’d impressed me a lot last year onsighting loads of hard routes in Pembroke day in and day out, pulling ryan after her. After one false start Maddy made a very smooth lead and it was no surprise to learn she was an excellent dancer. I very much doubt that she would be able to teach Ryan anything about dancing having seen his moves at the works after party….it was a beautiful thing.
​We celebrated that night, myself and Ryan being the DJs. Ryan really had learned a lot this trip. He'd learned I was a bit of a bastard and that if he'd got his hands dirty and abbed the routes he would have found them piss. I had let him down on this trip but I was very impressed by his efforts on OUAT.
   The morning after we bid Ryan and Maddy farewell , they were off to do a route called Booby Prize. I once again told Ryan no Lancastrian would ever reach the top of it.
 I dropped Ray off at the train station in Bristol and set off towards Pembroke. It had been slow on the M5, a 2nd and 3rd gear job but the M4 made that seem fast being a 1st gear job for much of the way. I got a message to say Ryan had in fact got up Booby Prize, even though it was raining and in piss poor condition!
I regard Pembroke as the best sea cliff climbing venue in the UK and perhaps the world for single pitch routes. There is a ludicrous amount and variety of climbs in a great setting.


Me and Emma went to the Range West briefing and headed into Mount Sion East. My memory of it didn’t disappoint, there must be at least a dozen brilliant looking new routes around the E5-8 ,mark left to do on the cliff. A roof crack 7 meters right of Littlejohns ‘Come all ye faithful supplied a fight and new route ‘The Royal Westing’. I had a swim at Broadhaven and after an excellend talk Emma gave at the Pembroke Festival of climbing I finished my evening at St Govans Inn with Paul Donnithorne and some whisky.
I felt pretty rough the next day but I could prognosticate that if I made it to the Royal Westing it could be much worse.

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    It was impressive. Emma walking up Mind Control with plenty in the bank, Josh and Jack Ibbertson showing that the future of UK sports climbing looked bright, Hock still able to do a 1 armer on an edge with his dadbod.
​   Yeah the Ibbertsons were the coolest family I've met I reckon. The only downside to the trip had been Angus’ morning routine of doing topless yoga in the living room in his skimpy leggings.
 I looked back on 2 weeks in Oliana:
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   After picking the hire car up from Barcelona airport I went and grabbed my old friend Adam Hocking who’d arrived an hour behind. In 1994 Hock had won the Juniour BICCs and could do 2 little finger 1 armers without warming up, still strong he now had 2 kids and a dadbod.
We put the trance on and took off to an apartment in Organya where Emma Twyford, Angus Kille and Rhos (with an unspellable surname) were already ensconced. Rhos was the only person I didn’t know and it became apparent she had a humour dryer than the Sahara.
   The first climbing day we immediately set about looking at projects and I settled on Fish Eye, with form in the past to have had a good go at doing it in a session this was my goal for the whole trip and I have to say I’ve not been on a sport route as good for many years. The routes that go to the top of the main face of Oliana are around 50 metres long and on the main face the easiest of them are 8a+.
   A couple of days later both Emma and Angus were lobbing off near the top of Mind Control. It was obviously going to be doable after a rest day.  On the rest day we all took a spin up to Coll de Nargo and Hock impressed everyone by still being able to do a 1 armer on an edge and holding a front leaver off an edge for 10 seconds even with his dadbod!
   I was nominated to share a room with Hock. He had his laptop on until 3 am watching movies before turning it off and immediately starting a low rhythm of snoring. This helped give me stimulus for keeping the world up to date with the ‘cragdads’ progress and coaching tips during the week.
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   James and Jenny Ibbertson are their parents who are also great climbers, teach D&T, Geography and Psychology and are having a sabbatical for the year. They are keen to keep the youths away from social media and the often unhealthy elements it can entail. I was impressed with the Ibbertsons for not only being probably the strongest climbing family from the UK but for having an extraordinary attitude.
   Having a good scene out there has made me committed to head out to that area for 2/3 months next winter. Having been inspired by my young friends I also swear that I’ll try to be on form where Hazel says “oh, you’ve done that already” rather than “have you not done it yet”!
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