UKH

Despite climbing extensively across the UK, Lancashire was never somewhere Rob Greenwood felt drawn to (sorry Lancastrians). In spite of himself however, he is inspired and motivated by the BMC's new bumper guide to the delights of the red rose county.

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In reply to UKC Gear:

If heaven ends up being real I reckon it'll look a lot like Thorn Crag.

In reply to deacondeacon:

Amen...

In reply to UKC Gear: I completely agree with your criticisms of the deletion of the history section. I (and many others) were strongly in favour of retaining the FA sections, and if push came to shove I'd have settled for a Rockfax style approach with the name of the FA next to the route.

The only response I got when I complained/argued regarding the exclusion was a neutral, political sounding reply from the guidebook committee that left me feeling like Jeremy Paxman trying to get an answer out of Michael Howard. I found that very frustrating, and well as massively disheartening.

The answer seemed to be that including the FA details would a) make the guide far too big and b) the FA details are on the web so what was I complaining about.

Being on the web is the same as just chucking them in the bin as far as I'm concerned and the book is much poorer for their exclusion. The BMC are now (I think) the only UK guidebook producer that refuses to include FA details in their guides.

Great review and I heartily agree with the criticism of the omission of FA details and history, I've heard this à lot... A shame, but not to take away from an excellent guide, well overdue.

In reply to deacondeacon:

Thorn crag - the only gritstone crag from which you can see the sea. A stunning location and well worth the walk in.

In reply to UKC Gear:

One of the entries in the first ascent list is wrong.

Cow's Mouth Quarry,
Visions From The Dark Side,
1999 September,

My name is Simon P Nadin, Not Simon R Nadin.
Cheers.

In reply to simes303:

But all the other posters say that there is no FA list!

In reply to Pedro50:

It's online apparently, but I agree with the others that a guide is poorer without these details. I don't get the 'lack of space' reason really - surely the FA info can usually be fitted in next to the route name and grade without spilling onto the next line? It certainly can in many other guides.

In reply to Paul Evans:


Not quite true, perhaps? Not been up for a while but I can't see any reason why you couldn't see the sea from Wolfhole Crag - it's just a bit further east. You can certainly see the sea from Baines Cragg and most of the small grit bouldering venues on Clougha. If you include quarried grit, then the sea is visible from the top of Lester Mill when it's clear enough (especially in the evening as the sun sets).
More seriously, I also was disappointed by the lack of FA information in the guide. I know it's online but who does anyone take their phone to the bog? Despite this, the guide is technically very good.

In reply to Lankyman:


Christ, that's like shitting in the dark ages.

In reply to Lankyman:
Agreed, and you can certainly see the sea from Denham, after all the Sea View Pub is just down the road.

In reply to simes303:

Well on a positive note, if you email Grimer he can correctly update the F.A list without having to pulp the entire print run!

In reply to danm:

Yeah I was going to do that. Cheers.
Si.

In reply to UKC Gear:
A few observations.

Contrary to the article, the 'Bible' - the older Lancashire Rock, was actually revised in 2006, and that version is smaller and significantly lighter than the new issue. So, it's actually gone back up in size. But, that doesn't really matter given that these aren't mountain routes, and you're rarely walking very far.

Why is the new guide bigger, when it can't (*theatrical sigh*) even include FA details?

Well, for a start, the review is wrong about the number of routes. The 2006 version claims to detail 3200 routes (I haven't counted, but I'll take Les's word). Given that new routes appear in the 2016 guide, along with the size of the index, I suspect there are significantly more than 3200 routes in the new guide, though I haven't spotted a figure.

This plays out even at a relatively minor crag, like Warton Pinnacle. I was there the other day climbing on 'Stile Buttress' - a short, fun little buttress, no more than 20m wide, that's always been a kind of introduction to better things on Plum Buttress. Nonetheless, the new guide has seven additional routes! For someone like me, who's been to Warton 92 times (according to my logbook), seeing new ways up these familiar faces has the force of revelation.

In fact, though it isn't mentioned in the review, not only are there new routes, but also significant new crag listings in the new Lancs Rock. Compare, for example, the listings for Rochdale: these have gone up from 10 crags and mentions of three 'minor crags' in the 2006 guide, to 22 crags in the 2016 guide, with 8 of these being 'minor crags'. However, whereas minor crag used to get a grid reference and brief description, now even the minor crags almost all get enough detail so that you could actually go down with a route list and match it up to the rock.

Whilst much of the guide is actually identical to the 2006 version - i.e. most of the route descriptions have been copied over verbatim - it's these additions that, I think, will matter to locals. Along with, of course, seeing their crags in full colour photographic topos. Again, this is revelatory: whereas before you had to decode descriptions such as 'the flaky, corner groove just left of the neb' ('The Troglodyte') and 'start at a tree where the ground just starts to rise and climb straight up' (Shardik, HVS), now you can plot them against a line on a photo, and wonder at the fact that you've actually been interpreting the description correctly, all these years.

The only downside of the new guide has been the 'marketing strategy', which has involved such atrocities as Niall Grimes stroking a Lancashire pudding, whilst others boast of never having visited the NW, rack their limited vocabularies for synonyms of 'wet', and imagine Lancashire much as the Tories pushing fracking and expanding nuclear waste facilities do: somewhere where no-one who matters lives - so many dreary post-industrial towns littered along the gutters of the M6.

Well, we f*ing live here, so p*ss off with your sodding "oo, it's almost as good as the Peak - a bit depressing, a bit wet, a bit working-class, but nevermind!"

In reply to C Witter:
Hi C Witter.

I want to say thank you for your post. I think it highlights what, for me is the strength of this guide and makes many points not mentioned in the review.

I appreciate Rob's review and the points he makes in it. However, when he sent it over for a preview before it was published, I made the point that it's a tricky book to judge for people who are not overly familiar with Lancashire climbing.

The majority of people who climb in Lancashire are people who live in the big towns in the area. And while one could say that Thorn Crag is amongst the best gritstone crags in the UK, in reality I don't think Thorn Crag is very important to Lancashire climbers. It's not where many of them go. It's crags like Ousal Crag, Egerton, Witches, Summit, Deeply Vale, Cow's Mouth, Denham, and a hundred others like it, that are the crags that users go to.

Oh - I should mention here, just in case, that I was involved in producing the book. And I stroke Lancashire puddings.

So yeah, the FA list is online. This was indeed to save space and cost. To me the book is at the limit of size. 50 more pages would have made it a poorer book, and you could save 50 pages by:

leaving out lesser crags
fewer action photos
smaller crag topos and maps

But at the end of the day you make the call. When thinking abouyt decisions, i think a good thing to have in mind is - "what will be best for the area and it's crags?"

As such making crags attractive and opening them up to new visitors seems to me to be the answer. As such, action shots and big clear topos does this, in my opinion.

No doubt a hoard of graphics experts will tell me how this could have been done otherwise. Thank you in advance.

So yeah, to me, Witter's points are spot on. This guide sought to and, in my opinion, succeeded, in bringing a lot of crags to light that are little known. Crags that languished under a few paragraphs of text with little to tempt visitors. Now almost every crag has a photo of it.

And I think the advantage of this is not only that you can find the routes, but you can see what they look like. Crags such as Warland Quarry, Cadshaw Quarries, Pinfold, Jack Scout, Hutton Roof, Shore Quarry - these crags look great in the book. I'm convinced there no better way of getting people to these other than showing what they look like.

So anyway, that's what I think of the book - a great service to Lancashire climbing.

Oh, and for the record, I have climbed quite a bit in Lancashire and love it. It's totally different to the Peak and i woyld happily climb there as on Stanage or Mill;stone. It offers something totally different.

And, as far as route numbers are concerned - I generally open the book and count how many are on that page then multiply that by the number of pages. It always looks about right.

Annnnnd, with regards to the point in the review about the bouldering, just to answer that. We kept bouldering recorded for the few crags that had traditionally recorded bouldering in previous editions - mainly Longridge and Brownstones. The book refers people, in every crag, to the Lancahire Bouldering guide (which the BMC supported financially) or lakesbloc.com for more info. In fact, the BMC shop even sells the two books together as a package.

https://www.bmcshop.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=7337

Annnnnnnnd, with reference to the erronious postcode Rob encountered - bollocks, sorry. And just to say, I used these because I have never ever entered one of those big long Lat Long references into my satnav, and if i did i'd probably do it wrong. I wonder where that postcode would have taken him....

In reply to C Witter:

Good point actually, the Brick is such an iconic guide that I totally forgot the Bible. I've got both on my bookshelf too (which makes the omission all the more laughable).


These figures were supplied by Series Editor Niall Grimes, so I would have assumed they were correct; Niall, if you're reading this could you confirm? Either way, what I've tried to get across - and what you've reinforced - is that there are more routes and crags within this guide than any that has come before it.


I'm not 100% sure how to respond to this, but what I was getting at is that the Peak is - at least if UKC logbooks are to be believed - the most popular climbing area in the UK by a significant margin. Assuming that is indeed numerically correct, which I think it is, then it was more of a suggestion for people from outside the area to venture within as opposed to the Peak. If you're local then there's a great many positives already discussed both within the review and your own post. I don't think I ever mentioned the crags or the area being depressing, wet, or working class though!

In reply to Niall Grimes:

Good feedback as always, thanks Grimer.

In reply to Niall Grimes:
and to Rob too -

First, sorry if the last paragraph got a bit polemical, but that's the venting of someone who's had it up to the eyeballs of Lancs being described as "grim".

Second: yes, it's a great guide!

Third: also, Crack Jam is good fun.

Fourth: but stroking a big Lancashire pudding is just off-putting.

Well done everyone.

In reply to C Witter:

Ok, thanks for the clarification - that makes sense.

Urban, maybe; but grim - no. I tried to dispel this myth within the opening paragraph, through likening it to other crags I've always felt were portrayed in a similar light, yet had a level of quality equal to any (hopefully that came across). Dumbarton and Pex Hill were two notable examples, but there's plenty of others - Shipley Glen, Weatherby (well, kind of...), Woodhouse Scar, Holmfirth, the Breck (ok, scraping the barrel, but I had a good time there) etc...

Hope that makes some sense, other than the parallels with a variety of mediocre Yorkshire crags!

p.s. I'm digging myself a hole here aren't I??

In reply to Rob Greenwood - UKClimbing:


Yes!!!

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Thanks, I needed the confirmation.

I'll get my hat...

In reply to Rob Greenwood - UKClimbing:

Digging? You're working harder than the Bolton and District Quarrying Company