Had a great week with Dave Gregory - only a bit knackering - I think 21 routes in the first two and a half days was probably overdoing things a bit though! The weather was kinder than on his last visit, and doing 30 odd routes (and at 72 and 3/4) was more than he would have got done in the UK. The biggest shock to the system was a visit to a great looking limestone crag at Chateaudouble - the guide’s 25 minute approach took us over and hour up an interminable scree slope - the climbing was good, but the descent was equally horrible - not sure my knees will ever recover.

Thursday we dropped Dave of at Nice airport and he had an uneventful journey home - jet-setting was never easier. On our return, the fat package in the post box was the brand new Northern England - nice! OK there are a couple of (very minor) caption errors in there - or are they simply Easter Eggs? Either way I am pleased with the way it looks - two years of enjoyable effort.

Thorbjørn has been and gone! An intense two days of pouring over the Lofoten manuscript looking for Nørwegian spelling miståkes on a chugging laptop left me knackered, it is surprisingly tiring just sitting staring at a screen for 12 hours, and sure brings on a quality headache! Long working days lead to late night drinking sessions (just to unwind of course) and 2am is too late to bed for a man of my years!
Thorbjørn was especially impressed with the way we utilised iChat to talk things through and shunt files back and forth, he said he almost expected to see Alan sat there with a big white cat on his lap, controlling his far flung minions! What an odd way to work though - Alan sitting in Sheffield would ask us, sat in the south of France a question about the book, then Thorbjørn would phone Arild Meyer up in Lofoten or Odd-Roar Will sat on an oil rig in the North Sea, and a few minutes later all would be sorted.
Alan is working his magic and the book is beginning to look stunning - possibly the most visually attractive book we have ever done. Even the locals back in Lofoten are starting to get excited - though apparently they have been asking whether we just do guidebooks or are we real climbers!

That’s Northern England put to bed - well just about! Three years of nagging to get Alan interested and two years of steady work, many trips to ‘the North’ - and we are just about there - its always a great feeling. Of course I have Lofoten to finish off (due out April/May) though that isn’t a huge job as I have been working in parallel on the two book for the last 18 months. Thorbjørn is going to call in some time over the next two weeks to help me sort out my pigeon Norwegian - overall he appears pretty pleased with the way it is looking so far. Then what - well I guess it will be time for a rewrite of Western Grit.

We headed down to the coast, had a walk out to the Cap d”Amont and watched the sunset - glorious - and according to the forecast is set fair for the next ten days.

Back to Clearpoint in Nottingham to see the presses rolling with Trad + (and add a few last minute corrections - try doing that with a printers in China!) . They have a new printer for doing the proofs and the colours were quite superb - at Clearpoint they take always a real pride in giving us exactly what we want - which is great. The large image shows the printing room with its huge presses and the smaller one a sheet of 32 pages out of the book.

Then it was on to Cordee in Nottingham (I knew that the SatNav would come into its own) where we had a very useful meeting with Richard Robinson and picked up 30 boxes of books (filled the estate car to the roof!) before cruising back to Sheffield managing to avoid the worst of the traffic. A useful day’s work, I pity the folks who travel the motorways on a daily basis!

The forecast for the weekend was poor so on Friday I went a walk with Dave Gregory. I had hoped to get up to Kinder to photograph the south side crags for the new Western Grit, but in the event it was cloudy. Instead we started from the Surprise View car park, went down through Lawrencefield and Padley Gorge and over to the Tegness Quarries, a place I hadn’t been for 30 years. We returned via Longshaw and quick loop into the upper end of Padley Gorge again. I told Dave about our travels the previous day, and in contrast we didn’t see a soul all day - though I bet the motorways were still busy!

A chance to visit Gran Canaria was too good to miss - I am working on the Lofoten guidebook with local mountain guide Thorbjørn Enevold, and he ‘winters’ down in the Canaries, it was either he came to Sheffield or we headed south - so no contest really! The journey from Sheffield to Manchester airport was pretty grim - pity the poor sods who commute daily - and the plane was full of screaming kids - though as we approached the island the view out of the window of the sunset over Gran Canaria and Tenerife made it worthwhile.

Beers on the terrace at midnight (22 degrees) and an air conditioned room was followed by a late start and a ride up into the hills. The roads are extremely tortuous as they climb through the huge areas scorched by last year’s fires. By the time we reached 5000′ feet it had cooled markedly so we hiked up to the foot of the Roque Nubio - a huge monolith of volcanic rock that was certainly living up to its name, it disappeared into the mist on occasions - at sixteen degrees and even some spots of rain, it almost felt like the Peak. There are some decent looking routes up there though much of the rock is a bit suspect - mind you to make up for it many of the bolts are pretty beefy!  The easiest looking way up is the German Route up the right-hand arete in the photo, which is fully bolted with big glue-ins but looks a bit like an aid route.

We zigzagged back down to the coast, had a quick trip to the Super Market and then back for a late tea - it had certainly been a change from the usual Friday set-up.

Clink on the link below to take you to a down-loadable version of the full index of the Eastern Grit RockFax. It is in full colour (grade bands) and includes all 2952 routes

The original index only included the starred routes because of the constraints of space.

EASTERN GRIT - the FULL Index

Photo: Colin on Tom’s Peeping VS 5a (or E1 6a?).

Deadlines, the weather, partners, home-life, other jobs - some juggling was needed as the autumn rapidly approaches and so does the printing date for Northern England.
A cast of thousands was assembled to get the final few shots and do some last minute checking.
In the event (and as ever) it fell to myself, Alan and Colin to spend a couple of frantic days. Day 1 was Scugdale, Park Nab and the Wainstones, completed just as the cloud motored in and the temperature plummeted. We bumped into a Cleveland MC meet and discussed the guide/photos/which cliffs were in an out etc, all in an amicable fashion, which was nice.
Day 2 and we drove through heavy rain to emerge in bright sunshine just south of Bellingham (the Craggs’ weather genie was at work), the day was spent on Callerhues getting trashed - the grades were as anomalous as we expected - and more so in some cases - all will be revealed in the new guide.
Then it was off to Causey Quarry to catch the last rays of the sun at the lads zipped up The Mauler (HVS 5b - or Severe 4a on Callerhues!) before heading for home - straight back into the rain!

With the forecast a bit unsettled we decided on a day out in western Lofoten yesterday and took the ferry (only one a day - climbing in here would need a bit of planning) for a quick trip round Rienefjord to get photographs for the new guide. There are some amazing peaks in there, the sort of things a child would draw for a picture of ‘a mountain’.
The most impressive is probably the charmingly name Brieflogtind (Wide Slab Peak apparently) - it is only 750 metres high (just a little higher than Kinder!) - but what a peak!
We also sailed past the huge shark’s fin of Seiltind (730m), of which the current guide simple says “first ascent unknown”. That presumably means the soaring faces are unclimbed!
Merraflestind (the third photo) is obviously so insignificant is isn’t worth of a mention in the guidebook or a spot height on the map! Despite this it is probably only a 15 minute walk from the pier and has some rather fine lines and currently at least ONE route!

Needing to sort the bouldering out for the new Lofoten guidebook, I spent a day visiting the half-a-dozen popular spots, playing on a few problems and taking pictures. I have never been a fan of bouldering, it always feels to much like ‘playing on rocks’ to me.
Having said that, they day after my session, I was aching all over and I’m not sure my fingers will ever work again - so maybe there is a point to it all!
Anyway, there is loads to go at, in some of the most sublime locations imaginable.

A quick mid-week visit to Birchen was in order - Mr Gregory was desperate for a day out and his car was playing up - so I took along a copy of the brand new Pokketz guidebook to give it a quick test-drive (test-climb?).
The volume performed as expected, locating the routes was easy AND it fitted snugly in my trouser pocket. We did a dozen routes and at the end of the session the guide had performed admirably, which is more can be said for the climbers - they were a little worse for wear (combined age of 128 probably had something to do with that!). We showed the book to a few other climbers and the response was favorable - and although there may be no need to carry the book up a 10m gritstone climb there is obviously potential on mountain crags and sea cliffs - anyone for a Gogarth Pokketz?