I think it was 1987 we first went abroad for Christmas, to the Costa Blanca and that was a revelation. Previous years we had been to Scotland, Pembroke, Cornwall and done a lot of caving. We usually manage to get something done though it was always a battle - Spain changed all that! Twenty years on it remains one of the most eagerly anticipated trips of the year - well along with Easter, Whit and the long summer break!

This year we are headed down to the Nice area for something a little different, I have climbed there quite a bit over the years, but don’t know it anything like as well as the Blanca - and a change is a good as rest!

If you are headed to there Blanca here is a small update to the Alcalali section of the guide below (download it via the link at the bottom of the entry) - there has been a lot of development there including a superb crop of new routes. There have also been problems generated by the routes on the far right which overlook the gardens of the villas - avoiding these would be a positive step.

Enjoy your break!

Download the Alcalali MicroGUIDE

The only half-decent day of the week prompted Alan and myself to go a do a little bit more checking for the Northern England guide. We were a bit tardy at actually biting the bullet and getting away from Sheffield and by the time we got to Caley it was almost midday. Conditions were not too bad though and we galloped round the boulders, sketching, checking and photographing a variety of bits and pieces.

Heading back towards the car it was obvious from the thunderous black clouds rolling down Wharfedale that Almscliff (Destination II) was going to be wet! We tooled up to the parking and it was already hammering down, though brighter skies to the north tempted us onwards to Brimham where the sun came out for the 1st time. As anyone who knows the place well will testify (though not as strongly as those who don’t) this is one crag that will tax any guidebook writer’s skills to the max - suffice to say we are working on it! After a complete tour of the place we joined the queuing traffic on the A1 heading for home

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 few cold crisp days was enough of an excuse to get away from proofing Trad+, tweaking Northern England and working on Lofoten. Friday was especially nice, myself and DG (Dave Gregory) dumped a car at the Surprise View then drove round to Moscar Top and walked back over Stanage - a gentle seven miler. The day was brilliantly clear but the NE wind had a savage edge to it, mind you it was over our shoulder most of the day, so that was nice!

I took a few photos of the ‘water-holes’ carved in the boulder above the northern end of the cliff - done to provide water for the grouse apparently, over a hundred years ago. It looks like there are 33 of them - they are all numbered, but quite a few are no longer visible, doubtless they have become overgrown. They are beautifully carved with elegant curved channels carrying the water into the central ‘basin’ one day I am going to try and find them all - I might even draw a map!

Heading past Higgar Tor we encountered a couple of folks with five BIG dogs, three Rotweilers and two Alsatians, roaming back and forth, we mentioned the presence of sheep on the moor - but, as ever, they assured us that ‘their’ dogs didn’t chase sheep

Sunday was a bit greyer, but Colin and Mark were down from North Yorkshire, and decided on Burbage North, which as it turned out was a good choice, what with the wind still nagging out of the north west.

I never cease to be amazed how busy the Peak is at weekends, a cold grey day in November and I ended up parking over near Higgar Tor! The climbing was good if a little chilly, certainly way better than being indoors - and the valley was buzzing - walkers, climbers, boulders, bikers - all out making the most of the Sunday.

I watched with dismay as a dog chased sheep down in the valley bottom (so maybe some do!) before heading back to the car, where to my surprise the thermometer showed a chilly 3.5 degrees - amazing we got anything at all done really!

Its probably many folks idea of paradise, 30 degrees every day, sea warm enough to swim in, hotels right on the beach, amazingly cheap - what more could you ask for? On the other hand a different perspective may see it as a sweaty, barren, over-crowded holiday camp in the sun! Having said that, as a mid-winter break from the UK - it certainly makes a change!
The hills are something different, over 6500′ it is 20 degrees cooler up there, with swathes of pine trees, masses of cliffs and small towns with shady corners. I suppose its good that different folks like different things of the hills would be as crowded as the beaches!

I managed to track down what look like the four main climbing areas;

1) Fataga: - a bit like Arico on Tenerife - accessible and about 70 decent looking sport routes with afternoon shade.

2) Ayacata: nice roadside crag, not many equipped routes, but the ones here look worthwhile and quite high. LOTS or rock in the area.

3) Roca Nublo: the 80m spire of rock visible from much of the island. About 20 routes, some quite large. Cooler than the other cliffs.

4) Tamadaba: supposedly the main climbing area on the island - but - two hours from the coast and a huge and utterly confusing area. It is basically a high plateau with the cliffs around the rim and approached from above. Very difficulty to find you way around - could do with a decent guide!

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.

I was up at the Wainstones at the weekend (and glorious it was too) doing a bit of finally checking for my new Northern England guide, due out in January. Ambling back down the hill at the end of the day my mind rolled back down the years, to my first visit to the North York Moors. Back in 1966 I persuaded my long suffering father to take three of us (all mid-teenages and mad keen for it!) over to Scugdale so we could bivi there for a couple of nights and do lots (and lots) of climbing.We humped our gear up to the crag (mostly consisting of tinned food) and set up home in a small cave. After an afternoon cracking routes off the rain started, and continued all night - by mid-morning things had turned squalid, and eventually we had to admit defeat, I trekked to the farm to ask if I could use the phone (and got a bollocking for ‘camping’ at the crag) - and my father duly turned up and carted us off home.

It didn’t take long to dry out (though most of the tins had lost their labels) and by early evening the sun was out and it was glorious. From our house I could see the distant hills bathed in sunshine - it all seemed so unfair!

It was a lesson learnt though - on a recent visit to Northumberland with Alan we drove through pouring rain heading for Callerhues, we were pretty close to sacking it when I retold this tale, we pressed on just a little further - and almost inevitably the sun came out and we spent a glorious day.

Sad maybe (must be a generational thing!), but getting a ‘new’ motor is always a milestone. The last one took us to Lofoten three times, and all the way to the Costa Blanca - so I wonder where the new (bigger - room for more grub, camping and climbing gear) will get us! A weekend up in the North York Moors will do for starters.

The Impreza was a great but brutal car and the lack of whistles and bells always irked - mind you simply hanging on was usually top priority most of the time.

Getting back from the garage with satnav was a revelation - a kind lady told me exactly where to go (in the nicest possible way!) - I may even chuck the scabby old road atlas away.

My first Blog entry was a Burbage Round, that I did last November with Dave Gregory and 11 months on we were there again, (he was fresh from a month in California) another damp autumnal weekend, out for a bit of exercise instead of sitting in font of the computer. It was foggy and damp but pleasant enough for all that, and I mulled over what we had done in the intervening year; a long weekend in Ariege, 14 weeks in Spain, back to Ariege on the way home again for a couple of weeks, six weeks in Arctic Norway and half a dozen trips to Northumberland/Yorkshire Grit - not a bad tally!

As to the future, a trip to Gran Canaria is planned and hopefully an extended trip to the Cote s’Azure, hopefully one or both of them might generate a guide. Then there is the Northern England guide on the horizon, and Lofoten Rock no too far behind

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