I’ve had some strange experiences at slightly obscure crags over the years but I can’t recall anything quite like our day at Callerhues. We knew that there was something a bit odd going on at this crag; even the locals had admitted that the grades were, “a bit on the stiff side”, and anyone who has climbed in Northumberland will probably realise the full significance of that comment.

It all started reasonably with a quick ascent of the classic Callerhues Crack - nowt wrong with that lad, a good HVS, possibly with a slight Curbar feel to it, but nothing that a seasoned grtistoner couldn’t cope with.

That was about it though as the next four hours really began to take its toll. Callerhues Crack is the soft-touch of the crag and everything else weighs in at one, two or even three grades harder than you are expecting. We got battered initially by E2s masquerading as E1s, then by E2s masquerading as HVSs, then finally by an E3 masquerading as a MVS. Mild VS! My ego found the ‘mild’ particularly difficult to take. Subsequent investigation revealed that the MVS called Paving probably followed a line about 1m left of where we were trying it, however I had already climbed that line and thought it was about E1!

Being a guidebook writer I know that grades are tricky; you are never going to get them right yet most of your readers expect that you have got them right. Not only that but they tend to be a bit upset when they think the book is wrong, especially if it went and ruined their day. All we can do is try and get them as accurate as we can, and if there are mistakes then we can try to correct them in the next edition, inevitably introducing a new set of grades that people can dispute.

That is what is so strange about Callerhues. Those grades have not really changed in the last 30 years despite being in a few guidebooks. Actually that’s not strictly true, the initial grades for some routes were even harder than they are now, but they were first climbed when E-grades weren’t widely used and any route less than 10m was regarded as a virtual boulder problem. So after one revision to take account of E-grades, Callerhues has sat there, lurking, ready to take on all-comers, especially southern softies.

The only reason I can think of for this is ‘historical significance’. The routes were put up by the revered Smith brothers and maybe no-one wants to annoy them by re-grading the routes. Whatever the reason, it is not a practice we intend to continue in the Northern England Rockfax. All the routes have been given new grades which we think are more in line with what you would find elsewhere in the country, particularly on the similar-style gritstone crags. We will have got some of these grades wrong, but at least it is a start.

We have been putting the finishing touches to the Northern England guidebook over the last few weeks, well, Chris has been at it for ages, but he passed the stuff over to me in July. Going through the various pages showed a few holes in photography, and information, so we planned a quick-hit visit to fill the gaps.

Day 1 involved a whole selection of great crags on the North York Moors: Scugdale, Park Nab and finishing off at the Wainstones. As luck would have it the CMC (Cleveland Mountaineering Club) had planned a meet for the Wainstones on that same evening - now that’s pretty damn keen: an isolated and exposed crag with a 30 minute walk-in, for an evening meet when the weather might be a bit dodgy! Anyway we were just packing up when most of the members arrived since it was too cold for us southern softies (more of that later). Having just bottled out of West Sphinx Direct - my excuse is that I didn’t have the required micro-wires to protect the bold move over the initial bulge but it was probably lack of motivation and cold fingers - we were leaving the crag since it was way too cold to actually climb. So when I later found out that keen CMC member Ian Jackson had not only climbed at the Wainstones in that freezing wind, he had also managed West Sphinx Direct, I was pretty damn impressed. He is not that tall either which I understand from shorty Jon Read’s comments makes the top move even harder.

The photo shows the easy (and possibly the best) way to get to the top of the Sphinx via the Nose Traverse.

The UKC team were at Froggatt the other night. Mick wanted to continue his quest to tick off all the Peak classics he had missed during his earlier ‘UK climbing’ career in the 1980s. We had an hour and a half before the BMC Peak Area meeting started at the Grouse and the plan was to get a quick tick of Valkyrie in, then drop in at the meeting. As ever with routes like this, they tend to bite back if you underestimate them and the quick tick turned into quite a drawn out expedition. The sun had well and truely set by the time we eventually scrambled off the top of the pinnacle and stumbled down the the steep crag path to the lower parking area.

Still, the plan was on track even if the meeting had started about 45 minutes ago. As we walked past the BMC meeting room and entered the pub, Michael Owen scored - one nil! Okay, let’s have a quick pint and see how the football goes. Then Owen did the business again and we decided to celebrate the second goal with a second pint. The problem was that Andy, the driver, had really enjoyed the beer - better than that rubbish you get in the Lakes, and wanted to sample some more without the driving committment! So it became a difficult decision but in the end the BMC didn’t stand a chance against the Cobden View Pub, a pint of Moonshine and Owen and the lads. Sorry BMC.