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 […]
Category Archives: UK
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 […]
Feeding the Rat in the Cairngorms
After a couple of great weeks enjoying the delights of climbing across Scotland with Helen, she made a family tag-team swap with Jake so I could extended the tour by […]
Glorious Glencoe
The next weather window looked like settling in over Lochaber, so we moved base camp to Craigallan (The Rucksack Club’s hut near Ballachulish, though the word “hut” hardly does justice […]
Skye Seacliffs
We managed to pick up a copy of the Skye Seacliffs and Outcrops guide on our way through Portree, with 5 minutes to spare before the shop closed – did […]
Caithness Convalescence
A couple of weeks after my… … we’d scheduled a spring trip to Scotland. A week into the recovery of my busted ribs (broken, cracked, bruised? Who knows?), tying my […]
Tumble off T-Rex
Yes, I know it’s fallen down! So did I! Read on and all will become clear… Paul and I were heading along a rainy A55 on the way to Gogarth, […]
Walking in a Winter Wonderland (not to mention Bouldering, Running and Climbing)
Our return from the extended Mediterranean heatwave coincided with quite a change back in Blighty. A “Siberian High” weather pattern dominated by a huge area of high pressure centred over […]
Big Wall Apprenticeship – where better than Hobby
When people ask me “How did you get into Big Wall climbing?” they’re invariably surprised to hear that my entire apprenticeship took place over a couple of hours in Hobson […]
Mantrap, Mousetrap Zawn – More Extreme Ledge-Shuffling
Scattered showers across the country prompted the inevitable journey along the A55. Stan and I try to schedule a Gogarth trip each year in the early Autumn, once the bird […]
Celebrating the Pinnacle Club Centenary
We were greatly honoured to be invited along to the Pinnacle Club Centenary dinner at the Vic in Llanberis (actually 102 years due to Covid). As well as the long-established […]
A Birthday in ‘Beris – The Skull and Scimitar Ridge
Another year and another birthday… … and the now-traditional personalised T-shirt from Helen… … harks back exactly 30 years to an ascent of Snake Dike with Jim. I’ve tried to […]
Swastika
Swastika was the third of my Hard Rock objectives for this long-weekend blast to Lochaber. Scorching temperatures on Friday and Saturday made it an easy decision to opt for the […]
Raven’s Gully
Hamish MacInnes has a legendary legacy when it comes to climbing in Scotland, but his contribution to Hard Rock (at least in the author’s opinion) was a bit of a […]
The Bat
The Bat on Carn Dearg Buttress on The Ben has a fearsome reputation, and barring The Scoop, was potentially the toughest assignment of the remaining ten routes on my Hard […]
