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 […]
Category Archives: UK
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 […]
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 […]
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