The End of Another Glorious British Summer
Well, Winter Climbing+ is now out of my hands and into the loving custody of Alan James. Neil, Ian, and I are all really pleased with how it’s looking. Ray Eckermann is doing the illustrations again, though not as many are needed as was the case with Sport Climbing+ and Trad Climbing+. One thing that is going to need illustrating is the ice axe arrest: to communicate to Ray what we need to have illustrated, typically I have supplied a sketch or photo. To detail the complex technique needed to perform an ice axe arrest, Ian Parnell and I met up to go to a park in Sheffield and look completely daft mocking up an ice axe arrest on a grassy bank, in August. However just before we headed out, I noticed that Ian was bringing a book that clearly showed the arrests, and the plan was to use this book to ensure we didn’t miss anything important. It quickly dawned on us that all we had to do was refer Ray to the book and we could miss out all that silly messing around in the park with offensive weapons.
The last two weeks of August were spent away from the frustrating weather. Audrey and I took her van down to the South of France and spent a couple of weeks lazing around on the beach, and climbing at Chateauvert and Céüse. I was particularly impressed by Chateauvert, what an amazing crag, a shame it won’t be in my French Rockfax. Céüse was of course brilliant, though most of my time was spent taking crag photos. We were a bit unlucky in that it was quite cold in the shade for the first three days, but then just a bit too hot in the sun. On the fourth day I got to see what made so many people go to Céüse in August – the conditions in the shade were perfect, and we did a few routes which were just immaculate, and made the walk-in worthwhile, and that’s saying a lot.
I’ve relocated to London now, and will be dividing my time between London, where I’ll be available for coaching on plastic, and France, where I have a heap of research still to do. I’m hoping to get some ice climbing and some snowboarding done this winter.