Turning 30, for some reason, is quite daunting. But what better way to mark it than by exhausting yourself in a climbing challenge? Thirty pitches in the Avon Gorge came to mind. As a complete punter, it would be difficult but still achievable. The Avon VS Challenge nicely takes up about half the pitches and is […]
Articles
Cycling across Europe
Trying and inevitably failing to sum up my three month cycle trip into a snappy sound bite for curious colleagues has debatably been more challenging than the ride itself. I am not going to attempt to do that here. Instead I will focus on one country, Switzerland, during which I also enjoyed a few days […]
How do you like your stake?
Ever seen one of these? I was away sea cliff climbing recently and found this stake. It was the only anchor in place and it would have been madness to use it. Stakes can look brown and rusty and reasonable (?) but are actually disintegrating below the surface. This particular stake was probably originally plain […]
A Trip to Thailand
A Trip to Thailand by Rob Morgan With darkness and cold setting in, I’ve been reminiscing about warmer times.. Back in August, Win and I went on holiday to Thailand, where we sampled the popular climbing destination of Krabi. We’d never climbed abroad before, so it seemed a fairly exotic location for our first […]
It’s Grim up North
It’s Grim up North A moderately successful trip to Arctic Norway by Dave Beynon The Fort William of the North “You have taken me to Fort William!” accused J.P. I checked the map. We were about 5km from Tromsø, several hundred km north of the Arctic circle and heading roughly south on the E8. […]
Two weeks in the Swiss Alps
After numerous changes of plan thanks to the conditions and a very last minute change of partner, I was finally in Bristol airport waiting for my plane to take me to the alps. After a very delayed flight and a missed coach I finally made it to the beautiful Italian town of Aosta where I […]
The Munros
The sky is dark and wet snow is in the air. It is Sunday the 16th January 2011 and I have just walked into the Drovers Inn on the banks of Loch Lomond, wet through and attracting strange looks from the Sunday afternoon punters who are locked into battle with pints and giant plates of […]
Take a walk on the wild side
As I drove down the A9 towards Perth on a lovely sunny autumn evening I felt rather pleased about the trip that was now drawing to a close. I had been in Scotland for nearly two weeks and my time had been spent getting to know some of its more remote mountains. Several years ago […]
A beginners guide to the art of seconding
You’ve completed a top-roping course and the climbing bug has bitten. You’re dedicated and spend many evenings at the local indoor wall, tentatively starting to lead, and then you start to fantasise about the big wide world outside – particularly its lumps of rock: the arching overhangs, the bulging buttresses and the angular arètes. In […]