A Passion for Climbing

During my SPA training last weekend I met two twenty something climbers who live down south and had travelled up for the course based around Hathersage in Derbyshire. As I drove us to The Foundry from Stanage they chatted about the various climbing trips they had been on, both obviously really excited by climbing and willing to travel long distances to get as much experience as possible. They talked of leaving work early on a Friday to drive up north, spending the whole weekend camping and climbing and travelling back down last thing on a Sunday to work again Monday. Often they are beaten by the weather and would travel hours just to be rained off. Listening to them made me realise just how lucky I am to be living here in the midlands. Throughout the summer some of my colleagues and I travelled less than an hour in an evening after work to get a few hours climbing in before dark. But later it made me feel like I’m missing out, because I’m so close to these rocks I rarely make the effort to travel further and don’t get the bunk house experience. I’ve had a few weekends away, which have been amazing and I think they’ve inspired me to do it more often.

In a way they reminded me of an excerpt in Joe Brown’s Hard Years. I must admit although I appreciate the climbing he did I found a lot of the book to be laborious descriptions of climb after climb, that I’ll probably never be capable of ascending myself. But there was one section that really stuck out for me, it was where he talks about saving money in order to climb in the Alps for three months, for me this was the most inspiring section of the book. I’ve seen lots of places in magazines that I’d love to go and climb at but somehow felt that they were out of my reach, that they were for other people to climb, people with the money and time and the support of people that will go with them. After reading this passage those places suddenly felt a little closer, a little more achievable and I got the urge to make some plans. There is nothing set in stone yet and saving money is always something I aspire to, but I’m excited nonetheless.