...By Simon Jacques (35 and a bit...)
Monday: Checking…
The new week and surprise, surprise the pitter-patter of rain auditions at the window, its symphony sounding a perfect day for checking out the Whatstandwell Area, with fellow guide scribe Offwidth. Sometimes you never visit places because no one else you know has ever been there, waxing lyrical to entice the senses. Sometimes because you don’t see them in the magazines, and sometimes, well just sometimes, because they are quarries like these. That’s not to say they are to be ignored, oh no! These holes in the ground aren’t, as some suggest as bad as genital herpes, they do truly deserve a visit as indeed we did on this wet day. Tipping our chins up to the quarry’s lip, great lines soon became evident and much scribbling ensued, as inky tear drops ran down the ledger. On the way back to the car, we spot a dubious video cassette stuffed into a hole in a dry stone wall. Obviously the youngsters of Whatstandwell’s porn sharing drop off…now that got you interested…
Tuesday: Piccies!
This is more like it, the great fireball burning up crisp azure skies …a photo day for sure. With blue & yellow t-shirts on the menu, the order for the day is some smashing Chatsworth Grit at a fine esoteric location. It sounds great doesn’t it? Well not quite... First off the farmer is bringing in his cows on the approach lane. Then the light starts to play a little game with us. As soon as Mr or Mrs model springs on the rock, a cloud shuffties over the sun. As soon as nothing’s happening, it moves on, mocking us… as the rock becomes bathed once more in perfect sunlight. If you have ever taken springtime rock shots in the Peak, you will know exactly what I mean…
Wednesday: Catastrophe…
Access issues plague the day, as a well-known bouldering circuit is no longer open for climbing. Phone calls are made and the mood is sombre after scripts have been prepared and photo’s taken. Still, it brings home the fragile relationship that we sometimes forget exists between ourselves and the environments we inhabit, not to mention the importance of keeping existing access agreements in mind when writing guides. An admonition in what can go wrong has been dealt out and due care must be heeded…
Thursday…Pioneering!
A day of action! A spot of exploration, new problems and getting down and dirty in the greatest woods in the region. For some, Froggatt may conjure up visions of smooth slab lines, soaring arêtes and crunchy cracks, all with a sprinkling of stars. Well them’s for me too, but maybe not in the same parts of Froggatt that you know and love. We are off to the neglected buttresses that lie below the main approach path, the rocks that you pass as you make your way to 3 Pebble Slab, Valkyrie, or maybe a Roman Orgy (yep its in the book!) The greenery of some of the bloc’s is soon overcome by a light brush and quality problems are sent. The dedication of the team operating in these parts to clean and find new lines is admirable, and after extensive searching and some hard graft, the script becomes rich with some truly inspiring lines. My bath at the end of the day is soup like in its consistency; complete with Lichen Shampoo, a sign of a good scrattle in them there woods…happy days…
Friday: Old Hands… New Routes…
I’ve been studying lines, straight ones, bendy ones and ones with a bit of a crick in them. This one’s the former of the former in that it should go, well, straight up! Enlisting the help of a fellow NHS chum on one balmy evening, we tramp down from the Grouse Pub to Tegness to see if it will go. Belay steaks are clipped, worried brows are furrowed, and clipped brows are worried. After a short top rope session, a worried cameraman is shitting his pants… But I fret needlessly as the warm up’s in the Quarry are dispatched easily by Lee who seemed oblivious to the shaley nature of the crag, loose holds, and scary top outs that are literally to die for. Through a lens, his soloing becomes strangely comforting, this is a man who knows this territory and is a perfect choice for the last great line in the Northern Quarry. Which makes it all perfect when he ties on at the bottom of his new route, I doubt he even recognises what he’s about to do. He climbs so fast, whacking in some poor gear, and soon he’s at the top, giving me time for only a couple of good shots, and with only a slight pause for reflection, states a grade of E3 6a. Evening Light was thus born, an unsightly offspring compared to its extended family of handsome siblings over Froggatt way. Yet this child of a honest but unloved crag can proudly hold its head high, just as its creator does each and every day…after all, Lee is 6ft 4!!
Saturday: A Kinder Surprise!
The Alarm goes off at some god awfull time for a Saturday, coffee is necked as pack up’s are hastily assembled. Guidebooks tumble off the bookcase as I try to locate the most recent to Ashop Edge. The 1970’s one, it seems, will have to do. The Grouse accompany me across the bleak moor to the Northern Edge where we hook up with the rest of the Moorland Grit Guide Team, and new routing is the name of the game it seems. All goes to plan and so far so good. Then Kinder starts play the very devil with me, evil green grit, and on the second of a new route, I pull a hold off that explodes onto my forehead, sending me spinning off into the wild moorland air… Stunned but not deterred I don a lid and fight my way back up slippery pinches to sneaky undercuts, and the route is battered to submission.
We move around Ashop edge, suspicious, nervy, a kind of respect growing to its remoteness, its ability to play games, fooling & teasing. Nowhere then more so apt than Jester Cracks to take my next fall down the mountain… just someone, somewhere, in summertime…
Sunday: Research…
Interestingly, I find that the husband of my old Primary School ‘Nit Nurse’ has put together an unabridged history of Baslow; so I gain some fascinating info for Gardoms. The origins of Froggatt elude me, until I find that it’s named after the people who dwelled there whom pertained to look like Frogs! …Must try harder…(see the book I found it eventually…)
Obtain some very rare pictures of quarrying at Tegness and Yarncliffe via a local source, humbling and exciting in the same instance… Oh and did you know that Julian Cope, the famous 80’s rocker has a website called The Modern Antiquarian, which deals with all things ‘Time Team’? Well he does, and a great source of information it is too, for places like Rowtor Rocks and Robin Hoods Stride. Speaking of which, a seriously good book for some historical quotation is E.A Bakers’ tome, Moors, Crags and Caves of the High Peak & Neighbourhood, check it out, they don’t write them like that anymore…
I end the very long week, in my cosy shed, perusing by lamplight some of the influential past guides to Peak Gritstone. Penned by such seminal authors as Byrne, Gregory, Allen and Milburn, these vast mines of information bequeath seams of guidebook gold, which continually encourage, concentrate the mind and force a grounded approach to the next modern working guide to the Peak Grit area. Something we hope you will all enjoy as much as we have in its long, sometimes painful but never dull and always inspiring creation…
From Froggatt to Black Rocks is out now see:
http://www.bmcshop.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=347&products_id=5932
The soon to be classic Over the Moors guide is due in 2011. Keep watching the shelves…!
No comments:
Post a Comment