If you’ve driven through Stoney any time since lockdown you can’t fail to have witnessed the huge “spike” in popularity of the bolt-clipping hereabouts. Every lay-by, pull-off and scrape on the verge has a vehicle parked in it – I’m guessing there were almost a hundred cars between Horseshoe and Garage Buttress. The closure of walls and resulting explosion of outdoor exploration has certainly got pros and cons.

I was only a little surprised, therefore, to find a couple of cars parked at Electric Quarry when Jake and I pulled up. We needn’t have worried – they were an overspill of caving teams who couldn’t get any closer to their subterranean objectives. Sure enough we had the place to ourselves, which is very much a sign of the times, given the concentration of high quality tricky trad on offer. If you can set aside the polish from years of top-rope training laps, and the ugly grimness of the sub-station, it’s a stunning piece of rock.

Oliver, E4 6a, is a fierce proposition, with a couple of testing runouts above decent gear:

Jake took the sensible precaution of checking out the gear on Helmut Schmitt, E6 6b, before upping the stakes…

before making a smooth job of this 1980 Moffat test-piece.