Mont Ventoux was the main attraction for this summer’s camping holiday in the South of France. Our aim was the same as most visitors, to cycle up the thing without stepping off the bike. In the end we managed it from both Malaucène and, the steeper climb, from Bedoin. First time up though was a lesson in how not to do it; too fast at the start and completely knackered for most of the ascent only getting to the top on my very, very last legs in 2 hours and 5 minutes. What we did wrong on trip one, we did right on trip two from Bedoin. An easy-going start led up the the relentless climbing section which just goes on and on, but by taking it easy early on I was left with much more in the tank for the upper section and actually manged 2 hours and 23 seconds this time. Next time I want to shave those 23 seconds off!

The place is an amazing magnet for cyclists with hundreds of people attempting the thing every day in the summer. Some are no hopers, some are tiny zippy little blokes who don’t seem to need to draw breath, but most are just normal people who want to test them selves on this famous climb.

Near the top you pass the Tommy Simpson memorial; a shrine which has acheived mythical status amongst many cyclists who decorate it with their discarded drink bottles.

.. and everyone was there! Climbers on boulders and routes, walkers by the hundred and loads of paragliders - I even saw two teams busy on Count’s Buttress! It makes you realise why some issue on Stanage crops up at most BMC Peak Area meetings and why the place needs its own Access Forum.

We were just out for a family walk - a loop starting near the High Neb parking, dropping down in the general direction of North Lees farm but cutting back up towards the Plantation and onto the top of the Edge. From there the loop is easily closed down the Causeway and across by the Buckstone back to the car. Earlier in the day we had seen loads of people walking around in shorts and t-shirts but this means very little for Brits who will go out wearing next to nothing in any weather, especially on Friday nights! So we ignored the signs and the kid’s (Dutch) mother pre-prepared them in all sorts of coats, hats, gloves and scarves which of course all ended up hanging from my backpack by the time we got to the Plantation boulders. I felt like a right packhorse (as usual).

But it was worth it since the views were stunning.

Typos - don’t ya’ just hate ‘em!

The little tinkers lurk menacingly around a text as you construct it trying to jump in when you are not looking. Lazy or slow ones may get spotted, but most sneak through, especially if you drop your guard, which tends to happen in long projects as you are overcome by fatigue, boredom or complacency. Even easier sport is the text with multiple editors which offers many opportunities for the creative and ambitious typo to bury itself while author and editor transfer the half-cooked text between them.

Once in the text the shrewd typo will slip on its invisibility cloak and be gone. Only a really good wizard can find them then and only by painstaking application of effort which is also subject to the triple whammy of fatigue, boredom and complacency - there are no easy spells for this. For some reason invisibility cloaks work even better on the wizard who wrote the text in the first place. The really clever typo casts a reverse spell over the author so that it actually implants the correct text in their mind so that every time the author reads the grammatical nonsense they have created, it actually makes sense to them.

And that is how the game goes, through all stages of proofing. There’s the initial text - loads of typos in that; next there is the first pass by the editor - some sloppy typos out but many slip through and a few new ones added for good measure. Then there is the proofer stage where the success depends entirely on the ability of the wizard doing the proofing. A good wizard will find loads, including some that aren’t even typos; a bad wizard will find a maximum of five typos in any text and these will all be in the first three pages. Assuming that you have gone with the good wizard then all you will be left with are the really stubborn little critters.

This is all in the proofing stage of course. As soon as the press starts rolling you can almost see those invisibility cloaks being cast aside. No need for any wizardry skills to spot typos now, any half-wit can see them, dancing around screaming at each and every person who opens the book. It’s job done for the typo and as they attain immortality on the printed page!

Typos cropped up with regard to the new Yorkshire Grit Bouldering book. I haven’t seen it yet but, based on experience, I strongly suspect that the finished book isn’t nearly as bad as some have declared. I have heard the same leveled at our books in the past - “the text is riddled with mistakes” - only to find after inquiry that ‘riddled’ actually means a handful of mistakes spread thinly over a few chapters.

There are also plenty of commentators who suggest “how easy it is to get a couple of mates to proof text”. We produced a book to one area where we identified five influential and knowledgeable locals. They were all friendly and co-operative towards the project and were keen to help proof the guide. I packaged up five print-outs of the full guide text (no small job), sent them off with plenty of time, with an SAE and all five arrived back within a week or so. The grand total for a 250+ page guide was 25 corrections out of the five print-outs, and 50% of these were date corrections of the proofers’ own first ascents. Now at least this was 25 corrections but a good wizard will find 25 corrections on one double page spread, so these 25 hard-earned corrections just become more effort than they are worth.

Over the years I have learnt that good proofing needs reliable and competent proofers, mostly likely ones who are being financially rewarded. Graham ‘hyphen’ Hoey and others like Carl ‘comma’ Dawson, Mike James and Dave Gregory have done a great job for Rockfax, especially in recent years now that we give them more time, however typos still slip through. I suspect that they always will since guidebooks in the UK just don’t have a big enough budget to fund 100% reliable proofing. Keep in mind the fact that proofing is independent of print run - a 350 page book, 2000 copy print run ‘technical’ book (tiny by publishing industry standards) requires significantly more proofing than a 600 page Harry Potter and I think Bloomsbury can probably afford perfect proofing without harming their book budget!

If you do find a typo in a guidebook which annoys you then have a bit of patience, accept the fact that you have a great-looking book which by most reasonable business standards is far closer to a ‘labour of love’ rather than an ‘agent of profitability’. You will certainly make the publisher and author happier by noting it down and pointing it out to them rather then making sweeping generalisations about errors you claim to have found on public forums.

Last year I started a thread on UKClimbing challenging people to go through the whole of 2007 without accepting a single plastic bag from a retailer - the thread is here.

“The idea is that you manage to last the whole of 2007 without accepting any plastic bag from any retailer. To do this you need to either carry what you bought, or use bags you already own. If you do get caught out then any bag you accept must be re-used at least five times for it not to count towards your total.”

If we are going to be perfectly honest about this then I have to admit that the James-Louwerse household failed in the strict definition of this challenge. I accepted a couple of bags when stuck at a checkout at a DIY store with lots of little fiddly items and a long way to the car, and Henriette was never really fully with the challenge. The fact that we moved house during the year didn’t help much and then getting two kittens meant that we suddenly needed loads of plastic bags to deal with the cat litter during the first few months while they had to be kept inside. However, the real result of changing our behaviour has been thoroughly successful and we now have a big stock of solid permanent bags (and a wheelbarrow) and we remember and use them, as well as re-using to destruction any old plastic bags.

I think one of the most encouraging things is that I have also noticed a slow change in other people’s behaviour. Shop keepers no longer assume that you want a bag and tend to ask now, many more people appear to be shopping with their own bags and there is also a lot more in the media about zero plastic bags, including the zero plastic bag village - Modbury in Devon. Decathlon now charge for plastic bags and I think it won’t be long before more shops start doing this. It seems to be one of these curious situations where the public opinion is way ahead of the retailers who are all terrified of charging for plastic bags as seen in this article.

So what is the challenge for 2008?

Well obviously to continue the plastic bag challenge, but this year’s main target for us is the stand-by devices and making sure they are turned off when not in use. This is so far proving much harder than I anticipated. So many devices appear to use a bit of leccy just to keep then ticking over like the DAB radios we have which all lose all their stations when turned off at the socket. I have an intelliplug which means you can power-down a whole series of sockets when your computer goes to sleep, however this also takes down the wireless network which I have now had to put onto a different socket. It also means every time I wake up the machine, the printers chug into action making a huge racket and probably using about 10 hours worth of stand-by power. Once again, they have gone onto another socket which only leaves some speakers and a couple of hard drives connected to the intelliplug.

The other issue which should probably be much higher on most people’s agendas is low-energy light bulbs. I am still amazed that the stock of old-style light bulbs is so big in most supermarkets and I had a real struggle finding a shop that supplied low-energy spot bulbs. However we have been using low-energy bulbs for about ten years now so this isn’t one that we as a household can improve on much. Getting the kids to turn them off though is a different matter!

When will it actually stop raining. We have a holiday in Cornwall planned soon and I have long been expecting that the warm weather was bound to have arrived by that time. Now I am not so sure. After a wash out last summer as well, the family is beginning lose its patience with my holiday plans. Next summer, I’m going where Craggs is since he never seems to get any rain.

The rain in France in August 2006.

I made the mistake of allocating my Cliffhanger visit to Sunday instead of Saturday. I understand that things went really well on Saturday with plenty of visitors and some sucessful comps. Sunday was a different matter which was obvious after traipsing up the hill from the parking and then being let in for free.

I only hope that the success of Saturday encourages the Council to organise a similar event next year.