Not Loving Shepherds Crag Climbing

My new climbing club’s last Tue evening meet for the year – it was a supposedly easy crag so I thought I’d best attend. I have to admit to quite a bit of trepidation though as, although I’d always been told Shepherds Crag was easy-peasy and all the beginners went there, I’d never liked what I’d seen of it from a distance!

Climbing My Local Quarry at Last!

Tue 20 Aug 2019
Since I moved up to Cumbria two and half years ago, I’ve been dying to get at my local quarry for climbing. I’ve got so frustrated waiting sometimes that I’ve just scrambled up some of the easier routes without a rope. I decided I needed to join a club and then I can get to climb it properly and chose Keswick Mountaineering Club – mainly because they had it on their meets list.

Head End Quarry, Sandale

Twistleton Climbing – Should Have Stayed in Bed!

Bank Holiday Mon 25 May 2015
I have spates of everything going wrong for me and need to learn that, when I’m in the middle of one of those, I need to stop doing anything at all and preferably stay in bed! This was one of those days…

Actually Enjoying Climbing at Hutton Roof

Sat 23 August 2014
After failing miserably for the last couple of years at the Harrogate Indoor Wall to find an outdoor climbing partner who is willing to drag me up various easy crags in the area, I decided my best course of action is to contact one of the local clubs who climb. Harrogate Climbing Wall do climb outdoors but only on gritstone which I really can’t do – the holds are just too rounded for my awful technique. What I was looking for was some nice limestone – I was sure I’d like that…

The Inaccessible Pinnacle – Part 2

Part 1 of this report left you hanging above the scary Inaccessible Pinnacle (or In Pinn) just before I had to tackle it. I’d put my rock boots on and had a little rest – now the time had come to head down the steep slope to tackle my rock climb of around 150 feet up the steep, very narrow and exposed east ridge…

A Mountain Coward’s First Multi-Pitch Rock Climb!

I decided a while back that I really needed to try at least one outdoor climb in preparation for my Skye Cuillin trip at the start of May. My friend Mark, who takes people climbing for a living, kindly offered to take me. Various crags were discussed and Oxford Crag in Patterdale, which is more or less a scramble, was the favoured choice. It was just what I wanted… single pitch, only around 30 or 40 feet and very, very easy.

Mark rang me to sort out a date – however, he said he now had plans to take me on a different climb – one which he thought would be better practice for the Cuillin. He said he was going to throw me in at the deep end a bit… ooo-errr! I wasn’t to know, at this stage, that the ‘deep end’ was a multi-pitch climb of around 250 feet going at ‘diff’ standard!

3 Week Beginner’s Climbing Course

December 2011

This might not make for the most entertaining post but could well be of interest to anyone thinking of taking up indoor ‘wall’ climbing…

Automattic’s Worldwide WordPress 5k Walk & My 2nd Climbing Wall Visit

Fri 8 April:
All us WordPress users were recently invited to join in a Worldwide 5km Walk Challenge and were given this week to do it. Admittedly, I walk almost everywhere and this walk was just to take me to my second climbing wall visit where I was to learn to abseil.

Jellied Appendages & Richard-in-suspenders on the Climbing Wall!

Today was my first time on a climbing wall with a rope and someone paying attention to what I was doing (rather than doing their own climbing and leaving me to entertain myself).  I’ve had a unroped play on a couple of bouldering walls before while my climbing friends have honed their skills but never on a rope and never so high up!

Unflattering Photos of my Bum! ;-)

Just woken the neighbours having total hysterics… The reason is that I’ve just borrowed Richard’s new digital camera (don’t worry, he’s still keeping his Nikon film one) and am getting some pictures off it which he took of me last Sunday. We’ve taken to going to the famous Cow & Calf rocks on Ilkla Moor Bar t’at to scramble the various easier routes there…