Happy Mother's Day

Environmentally friendly

You never know where you're going to meet a sporran in Scotland. The latest manifestation is on re-usable shopping bags from Tesco.

I have quite a collection of re-usable shopping bags - they're one of our favourite holiday souvenirs (a good Scottish souvenir - useful and cheap). E. Leclerc bags from France (.. and 1998), Ferraro Foods from British Columbia, Adeg from Austria, cloth 'Die Umwelt zu liebe' from Germany...
What's your local re-usable shopping bag like?

Christmas Reading

I've decided to make a Christmas reading list.Here are the books on the list:1. Christmas with Rosamunde Pilcher2. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever-Barbara Johnson3. An Irish Country Christmas-Patrick Taylor4. I Saw Three Ships-Elizabeth Goudge5. The Christmas Mouse-Miss Read6. The Sister of the Angels-Elizabeth Goudge
Does anyone have another good Christmas book to recommend? I'm hoping to have lots of time for reading in front of the fire!

Winter, dry, both or none?

Obviously, the dry tooling route I did on the CIC cascades under the Ben Nevis north face last week was going to provoke a bit of debate. In my mind it’s perfectly suited to climbing in this style and it’s no threat to the traditional Scottish winter routes because it’s so clearly different from them. It did make me wince when I saw UKclimbing.com include a Scottish winter grade in their headline reporting the route. I didn’t give it a Scottish grade for a good reason! I should have seen that coming I guess, although it was hard to foresee that a casual comment by me comparing it to a similar piece of climbing terrain with a winter grade would mean folk would then take this one as a winter route. A bit like saying an E8 trad route has 7c+ climbing - it’s still different from a bolted 7c+! This seemed to fuel a bit of debate about how it related to the traditional winter climbing game. To me, it’s totally clear the route is a tooling route, not a Scottish winter route. Clear and simple.

Some folk argued that maybe it should be left alone in case it dilutes the Scottish winter conditions ethic. I personally don’t agree with this. My feeling is that a one size fits all ethic for anything climbed is unnecessarily simplistic. It’s a shame not to climb that crack just because it doesn’t get rimed up. It’s an excellent climb.
More so than any other climbing discipline, Scottish winter climbing seems to be awful scared of losing what we have. Of course it’s special and worth defending. Perhaps because I like going for the steepest routes I’ve spent more than my fair share of days walking in and turning on my heel because the project is not white enough. It’s natural to resist any changes (even if they are only additions) to the status quo, but not always good. Balanced against the fear of losing what we have must be a fear of losing what we could have. To me, the diversity of British climbing has always been it’s greatest asset. A strict and narrow focus on what can be climbed with tools is a strength in upholding a strong ethic, but a weakness in undermining the diversity of climbs that can be done. I just don’t see that the threat to the Scottish conditions ethic is real. Rather than diminished over the years I have been a climber, I feel it has strengthened. The ethic is so strong, it has room to accept some ‘outliers’. However, that is of course just an opinion of one and may be outweighed by those of others, which is no problem. If other folk thought the tooling route was a good idea, very few have come out and said so.



Winter condition or not? What do you think?



A further interesting twist came when the other new route I wrote about (The Snotter) was questioned for not being in winter condition. I must say that took me seriously by surprise. I’ve done plenty of mixed routes that were on the borderline, but it didn’t enter my head that this one wasn’t in good condition. Simon Richardson wrote a particularly below the belt post on his blog which is here. For some reason he didn’t mention my name in it, and is was a little weird that he wrote such strong words and then reported another new route of mine in the very next post. Anyway, the reason it took me so by surprise was the focus on the section of overhanging wall to get between the ice grooves below and the hanging icicle above. I deliberately went on the route because the recent sunny conditions has been good for helping the grooves below the icicles to become iced. In the 55 metre crux pitch, around 47 metres was climbed on water ice, with 6 metres crossing a grossly overhanging wall underneath the roof to get to the icicle. The 30 metres of grooves below the roof were climbed on ice, initially stepped iced slabby ledges, then a thin ice smeared rib and groove, apart from a few hooks on the right of the ice. Once on the icicle, there was a long section (15 metres at least) before the angle even started to lie back.The downside of this mix of conditions was that the overhanging wall itself was pretty dry. My thinking was that this is par for the course for this type of route. The sun helps more ice form, but at the expense of the rime. My interpretation (which may be ‘wrong’ if such a judgement can truly be made) of Scottish winter conditions is that basically the route must be wintery in appearance. If it was nearly all dry mixed with a little ice, it would be outside that definition and I would have come back another time. But the reality was the pitch was nearly all ice with a short section of dry rock.
A central view in my own new route climbing has always been that I don’t want it to be at the expense of anyone else, even if I don’t agree with their position or motives. Clearly, some folk feel that way. So I have taken away my blog post about the routes and recommend that folk forget about them, if that is what they want to do. They still exist of course, in my memory as great days out and two of the most fun climbs I’ve done in a while. Nothing more ultimately matters. Anyone else is welcome to climb them as first ascents if they feel those ascents are more worthy.

Classical flour

The back of a flour lorry, complete with Latin motto 'be mindful'. Latin used to be very widely taught in Scottish schools - in the 1970s my state secondary school in the north of Scotland offered not just Latin, to university entrance level, but classical Greek as well. Modern languages were French, German, Russian, Italian and Spanish. Now, last time I looked, my old school was offering only two European languages, and Latin and Greek had been discontinued. My children have both studied Latin as a compulsory subject at school, and I'm glad they've had the opportunity. They may not think it's done them any good, but I'm sure it hasn't done them any harm. And they may even be able to translate the back of a passing flour lorry.

Armchair birding

Female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius), eating berries from an Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana).

As seen from our living room sofa.

Please excuse the dirty window glass. I don't wash the windows, so that the birds won't fly into them. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)
I didn't actually know that Sapsuckers ate berries, until I saw this one doing it.

Welcome to San Francisco, Max!

Max. You are the the Creme de la Creme Tour Operator when it comes to hosting foreigners to your country. With fanfare and flourishes, you guide wayward tourists through parks with truly wild aminals, present interesting foodables to your followers, and point out extraordinary scenery, such as Table Mountain with that special "layer of tablecloth." I would love to show you San Francisco from a unique vantage point! But first...
... you'll need to don some flowers in your hair! There ya go! Let's trip on up to the Marin Headlands where we can get the perfect view of everything "San Francisco"! (There's some gentle doggies there hehee!)
You can lay down here on this log, and I'll do some woofing about those "little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars"... well, according to somebody called Tony Bennett! Tony also says that "the morning fog may chill the air - but he doesn't care!" I'm pretty sure you don't mind a bit of fog, Max. I think I'll just lie down there with ya too and warm up a bit as we check out the view!
Look at that city beyond the Golden Gate Bridge! I can't tell you how incredibly grateful we are that you've woofed so much about South Africa to us all - thank you, thank you bigtime, our 'round the world friend. We know you have so many more pups to visit on your world tour, but we really appreciate your stopping by here on your global trip.
While you hang here in San FranciscoAbove the blue and windy seaI woof to you while we watch over San FranciscoYour golden sun shines out to me!
You will always shine for us, Max! Happy Valentine's Day, dear pup and thanks a billion for stopping by.

Fav Photographs For Pinterest

These are some photos from other blogs that I just love. I've been saving them on my computer desktop, and now that I'm on Pinterest I wanted to Pin them. The only way I could figure to do this was to put the images in a blog post and THEN pin them. It worked. If anyone knows an easier way, please let me know! I was going to delete the photos after pinning them but then thought that ya'll might like seeing them. My favorite is the reading nook. Oh...my...goodness. If I had a place like that in my house, I might never come up for air!

Twin Falls, Springbrook

Since it's been a while between posts, and since I didn't do a great deal last weekend as a result of a flood, I'm going to post some pictures here from a day out at Springbrook a few weeks ago. This was a little while before last weekend's downpour, so I imagine things look completely different up there now. For the record, yes I did ride up the mountain that day, as I always do. The great thing about being able to ride to a place like Springbrook is that just locking the bike up for an hour and continuing on foot can allow one to access another world.



Although it's obscured in this shot, there is a decent swimming hole at the bottom of Twin Falls. Even on the hottest day (which is rare at Springbrook), the water in that pool is absolutely freezing, it's a very effective way to cool down (and more) after riding up the mountain. It is actually possible to paddle to the far side of the pool and sit right under the falls themselves, but it's probably not a good idea to stay there very long.




I have a much greater epic planned for this weekend, and the recent rain should make things very interesting.

Too much of a good thing?

For those who aren't familiar with cycling terms, "cadence" refers to the raw speed at which one turns the pedals. It is said that selecting a lower gear and pedalling at a higher cadence is more efficient than selecting a higher gear and pedalling at a slower cadence. Accordingly, I've tried to improve that side of my riding over the last however long it's been. Sometime during yesterday's 167km spin through the Tweed Valley, it occurred to me that I've probably taken it a little too far.

Martin joined me on the early section toward Murwillumbah, and pointed out that I was "wasting energy", however, the magnitude of the situation didn't become apparent until the climb over Tomewin, and the fact that the we reached Murwillumbah 10 minutes earlier than I'd expected -- and that against the wind. After Martin turned off, I continued my search for more kilometres. I persevered with a slightly altered style of riding, selecting slightly higher gears without changing too much, and the ride seemed to evolve a little faster than I could have anticipated.

Coming out of the pretty, forested section near Mebbin National Park, two things became apparent. First of all, the flood damage in this area was less than what I'd expected. Secondly, the southerly wind of earlier in the day had now become a northerly, meaning that I'd be pedalling against it on the way home as well. I persevered with the change I'd made, and somehow it worked. The traditional "lunch stop" on this ride is Uki, today it would be Murwillumbah -- another 20km down the road (including a steep climb on the Stokers Siding detour). Even then, it was probably still a little early for "lunch".

The return was the now traditional route through Urliup and Bilambil. Neither climb really troubled me unduly. It seems that spinning slightly slower had conserved quite a bit of energy, and Bilambil didn't quite fulfil it's role of "nemesis" quite the way it usually does. The "conserved energy" also meant that the last 30-odd km of suburbia didn't take long to sort out. Normally coming home from a ride like that against the wind causes it to take forever. The new style seems to be a winner all round. On the other hand, the "old" style got me through the Alpine Classic just a few short weeks ago. Hmmmm.....