West Country Climbs has been published! This much-anticipated guide is now being sent all round the country to people who pre-ordered a copy, distributors and retailers in time for the summer holidays which start next week for most.

This is our second book of 2010 and has once again been published on time. It is the biggest Rockfax ever at 424 pages and finishing it off has taken a huge effort from the Rockfax team, author Mark Glaister and Editor Stephen Horne in particular.

This book represents several milestones for us:

• The biggest Rockfax ever at 424 pages
• The most paper ever used in one print run at 12 tonnes!
• The 250,000th Rockfax book ever printed! That’s 1/4 of a million books!

BUY NOW

DOWNLOAD THE FREE SAMPLE CHAPTER

West Country Climbs is now available for pre-ordering from the Rockfax web site. We are doing an extra special offer for this one since we think it is an extra special book. Pre-orders will get £5 off the normal retail price, including free delivery! The catch? Well there isn’t one, except that you need to order before 19 July.

The book will be published in the week beginning 19 July and pre-orders will be sent out in that week. Specialist Outdoor retailers will have their stock by the weeknd of 24 and 25 July.

This book represents several milestones for us:

• The biggest Rockfax ever at 424 pages
• The most paper ever used in one print run at 12 tonnes!
• The 250,000th Rockfax book ever printed! That’s 1/4 of a million books!

PRE-ORDER NOW

DOWNLOAD THE FREE SAMPLE CHAPTER

If you do order online, please consider supporting the UK Specialist Outdoor Retail trade. Buy your guidebooks from their web sites or over the counter, don’t buy from big non-specialist book sellers like Amazon. They don’t hold much stock which can delay your delivery, they slash margins and create artificially low prices because they can afford to do it, yet when a book isn’t selling they will not hold any stock any more. The small Specialist Outdoor Shops need to invest in holding a wide stock of guidebooks on their shelves so that we cli,mbers get the choice we want when we go into their shops.

Support the UK Outdoor Trade - don’t buy guidebooks from Amazon!

Since the publication of the 2008 guidebook, there has been a bit of a boom of activity in Lofoten. The locals were used to having the place almost to themselves but an influx of international visitors has resulted in a small part of the vast potential of this amazing granite landscape being realised. Many major new routes have been added and these have now been documented by Chris and Thorbjørn in a free update.

The Update has 24 pages detailing new routes, changes and corrections to the 2008 guidebook. It is available in the two different booklet formats.

The Update has been supported by the Nord Norsk Klatreskole (NNKS).

Download the update here

The pre-easter rush got even busier today with the delivery of North Wales Classics - almost two weeks ahead of schedule. We got a lucky break with the binders and the book went through early making it a turn around from last key stroke to finished product of 16 days - a new Rockfax record!

The finished product looks great and really is a compact little book that will fit in your pocket. We hope to get all the online orders out by early next week and the shops should receive their stock by the middle of Easter week.

Now its on to West Country Climbs. At 400+ pages and back to A5 size, we will have our work cut out to get that one out by the summer but we are still on track for a July publication date at the moment.

North Wales Classics is now at the printers and will be published early in April. This brings to an end a frantic three weeks  of activity from the author Jack Geldard, new Rockfax employee Stephen Horne and myself. The work was made even more frantic due to Jack’s idea in January - “why don’t we add a Welsh Winter section”. After initial scepticism on my part (at this stage of a book’s production life cycle, the last thing you need is a complete new sector) it eventually dawned on us what a great idea this would be. We have after all just had the best winter for years, and Jack and others had managed to get a superb set of crag shots of the major crags in perfect conditions. So even more frantic work has resulted in a full new winter section including Craig y Rhaeadr, the Trinity Face, Cwm Idwal and the Black Ladders.

The finished book looks great. It is in the smaller Pokketz size (A6 and a thin 208 pages) so that it fits neatly into your pocket making it easy to carry with you on the longer mountain routes. We have also focussed on the lower grades and included a few crags that have never properly been described elsewhere before, despite having hundreds of logged ascents in UKC Logbooks!

You can pre-order a copy here at a special offer price of £14.95, including delivery in the UK (RRP £16.95). The books will be sent out in the week beginning 12 April and this will be the fastest way of getting hold of a copy. Outdoor retailers should have their stock by the weekend of 17 April.

Whilst the country lies under a blanket of snow, here at Rockfax we have been dreaming about much warmer plans for this year with our new Rockfax schedule for 2010. As ever we intend to produce at least four new titles this year, a process which should be even smoother when the new Assistant Editor starts work in February.

First off is North Wales Classics. UKClimbing.com Editor Jack Geldard has been fitting in some intense guidebook writing in his local area and is now putting the finishing touches to a pocket-sized A6 ‘Pokketz’ guidebook to the best routes in the mountains of North Wales. The book will cover from Tremadog to the Carneddau, including Llanberis, Cloggy, Idwal and Tryfan amongst others. The book is due in March.

Next up is another new book for us; West Country Climbs is Mark Glaister’s magnum opus for the south west of England. It may well end up being our biggest undertaking yet since the area it covers is vast: from Avon, through Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, including sea cliff routes, inland tors, sport climbing quarries and  limestone crags. The book will feature 800 superb routes in one of the country’s favorite locations.

Later in the year we will be bringing out our third new book of the year with part 2 of our France series. France : Cote d’Azure is being put together by Chris Craggs and will cover the brilliant and extensive area on the Mediterranean coast, between Marseille and Nice, venturing as far inland as the Verdon Gorge.

Our final scheduled production will be a new version of the amazingly popular Mallorca guide. This is due out in December 2010 and will cover a number of new crags since the 2006 book, plus enhanced coverage of the older venues. This book is being written by Alan James and Mark Glaister.

I am happy to announce that we have just published our fourth book of the year. Stuart from the printers  just left me with 11 boxes of shiny new  books which look absolutely great - beautiful colour through and some of the best crags you can see anywhere.

More about the book here

More about the area here

Free PDF map of the area here

Order the book here

The pre-ordered copies are being stuffed into packaging as I type and should all be sent out by Friday 11, although we did have a very good pre-order response so there are rather a lot to package up.

Cordee, the main distributors, have their stock as well and they should be getting copies out to the shops by this weekend. We hope that al major shops will have their stock next week.

Next year we have another four books planned although perhaps with the new sub-editor in position, we might be able to make it 5!

The fourth Rockfax publication of the year is now at the printers and should be ready around 10 December.

France : Haute Provence is the first in a series of books covering the superb climbing found in the south of France. The series is being managed by Adrian Berry who has spent all his time in France since finishing the Rockfax ‘plus’ series of performance books. He has managed to put together a magnificent set of crag and action shots that show these great crags in all their glory. For the travelling climber this book will be invaluable, introducing many to crags and areas they may never have heard of, and bringing together some of the more famous crags like Buoux, Céüse and Orpierre in the same publication.

The book is available now for pre-ordering from the Rockfax web. Those who commit to a pre-order will get a special offer price of £21.95; that’s £3 off the normal retail price and don’t forget that we offer free delivery for all UK orders. The offer will last until the book is published on 10 December. After this it will be available from all outlets for the RRP of £24.95.

The Pembroke Rockfax has been published and is now available from the Rockfax site and specialist online retailers. The book is a selected buttress guidebook containing the most popular climbing on North Pembroke, Range East and Lydstep areas, and it has significantly enhanced coverage to its popular predecessor - the 1995 Pembroke Rockfax.

The publication comes at a great time for Pembroke enthusiasts since the MOD announced last month that there would be significantly fewer restrictions on climbing in Range East this August, and no restrictions during the last 2 weeks of the month - UKC news item. With the bird restrictions also ending on 1 August there has never been more climbing available on these superb and much-loved cliffs.

If you wish to get hold of a copy then most outdoor retailers should have stock now. You may be able to get the book cheaper from non-outdoor websites like Amazon, but be aware that they don’t have stock so the book can take a long time to arrive. Please also consider supporting the UK outdoor trade when purchasing books - the prices may be higher but the service is better. The prices are not higher because the Outdoor Trade is profiteering, it is simply because we don’t shift the volume that Amazon do.

We are nearly there with the Pembroke Rockfax; 14 years after the last edition was published and 4 years since it sold out!

This book has required some incredibly hard work over the last few months by Mike Robertson and myself, not least because we have had to make some essential trips to Pembroke, and force ourselves up some of the routes. All our work has now finished - the last lines applied to the topos, the last action shot placed, the last text description proof-read.

Yesterday we got a look at the running sheets for the book (large printed sheets of all the pages) and, even if I do say so myself, it looks absolutely stunning. If you haven’t already seen it then take a look at the sample Mother Carey’s chapter here.

Pembroke has been a popular destination this year and the new that most of Range East will be open for all of August, including mid-week (UKC News Item), coupled with the bird ban coming off on 1 August, means that there has never been a better time to visit this fantastic area.

How to get hold of a copy

We are expecting stock to arrive in the week beginning 10 August. The quickest way to get hold of a copy is to pre-order now at a special offer price with free delivery within the UK - ORDER HERE

Your local retailer or favourite online retailer should have stock for around 15/16 August.