Climbing

Climbing has been a large part of my life for over twenty years now, fell walking about ten years longer. So, surprise, surprise it forms the largest part of this site.

I began climbing as a sport in 1980 though I had done some rock climbs intermittently over the years at school. There is even a picture of me aged two climbing rocks on the family farm! So climbing does seem to have been in the blood though quite whose blood I got mine from is open to debate as no-one else in my family has had the urge to climb, either in previous generations or the current one.

I have never pigeon-holed myself as to the type of climbing that I have undertaken though true Big Walls in the style of those on El Capitain in Yosemite Valley remains one area where my experience is sadly lacking and until the advent of bouldering mats, bouldering was not something I regularly undertook and the constant (for me) dropping onto hard earth did not do my knees any favours. Neither were they (my knees) done any favours when I was run-over in April 1993!