One day like this…
One swallow might not make a summer, but the year’s first trip to Gogarth certainly marks a significant watershed in seeing off the winter. The lure of promised sunshine out […]
Category Archives: UK
CAC-ing it!
No, not another close scrape on a crumbly seacliff, unlike this time last year… Coming home from Greece, to what must be one of the most miserable Aprils on record, […]
Chilly “Up North” (Pembroke)
With our brave boys having resumed firing on The Range (great to know we’ll be well prepared if the Russians decide on a beach landing in south Wales!) we shifted […]
Wild West
The cruddy forecast across the whole of the UK barely merited packing the van, but a month of cabin fever had me gently twisting Helen’s arm to brave the damp […]
Duddon and Kern Knotts
An unexpected end-of-March / Easter weekend weather window saw Jake and me at our usual M6 Junction 36 rendezvous, trying to decide on a Lakes venue that would be warm […]
Big Top – Aonach Dubh
Looking to continue our 4* tour around Craigallan (our 4* base in the Rucksack Club hut at Ballachulish) we settled on Big Top on the west face of Aonach Dubh. […]
The Bullroar – Buzzing and Basking on The Ben
With one of those rare Fort Bill bluebird days in prospect, the only logical destination was The Ben. Having exhausted the Hard Rock opportunities, we narrowed our focus to some […]
Swastika Ticked!
An otherwise highly successful trip last year, to tick off some of the remaining routes on my Hard Rock to-do list, ended on a frustrating note. Having done … and […]
Communication Breakdown in the Land of Steepness and Looseness
There’s a mythical sun-kissed world, way out west, where the land meets the sea in a twisted mess of verticality and fragility: The Land of Steepness and Looseness a.k.a. Gogarth’s […]
A Trad Apprenticeship
Tash and Chris had got a week’s holiday and a first opportunity for ages to get some climbing done after the rigours of thesis writing. I was duly commissioned to […]
A Mixed Bag of Bolts
No, not a trip report from an expedition to ScrewFix (though perhaps that would be more exciting!), this is a roundup of the shower-dodging exploits from the last couple of […]
Cornwall Capers
“Flaming June” seemed like a distant memory as we contemplated the forecast ahead of a planned trip to the South West. “Unsettled” didn’t really do it justice, with torrential rain […]
Just Another Week in The Peak, plus a trip up The Matterhorn*
(*Spoiler alert – more accurately a Matterhorn rather than The Matterhorn) Just another week in The Peak started off with a visit to one of my regular haunts: New Mills […]
A Trip down Mid-Wales Memory Lane
I’ve said before how it was Helen and her Dad, Pete, who first introduced me to climbing, over 40 years ago (and without whose intervention you might be reading GolfingAroundTheWorld […]
Climbing with Dolphins at Ynys Lochtyn
A trawl of the UKC crags map, looking for a stopover on our way down to Pembroke, threw up an interesting option: the island of Ynys Lochtyn in Cardigan Bay […]
Pembroke – Way Out West!
Our Pembroke trip was one of those spontaneous “it’s too nice to be at home, where shall we go” efforts, so it was a happy surprise when I realised that […]
Missing Link, St David’s Head, Pembroke
We usually try to time any long journeys to the crag in weather windows unsuitable for climbing – normally ending up driving in the rain, but our trip to Pembroke […]
Hunger at Gogarth
Fear not! This isn’t a tale of inadequate catering on the Rucksack Club’s annual Gogarth meet (a.k.a. “The Barbecue Meet”, much to my chagrin!). Helen and I have been organising […]
Skye – an island of contrasts
We had two days to round off Jake’s week-long whistle-stop tour of the finest climbing in Scotland. After visits to the Cairngorms (Creag An Dubh Loch) and The Ben, an […]
A Bivvy on The Ben
There’s so much brilliant climbing on Ben Nevis that, although I’d already ticked both its Hard Rock routes: Centurion and The Bat … it didn’t take much for Jake to […]
RockAroundTheWorld 