Friday 26 September 2008

Climbing In Leicestershire... an article for climber...

It’s ten o’clock on an early May morning and I’m at home in Leicester, doing a bit of work at home. The phone rings.. It’s Martin Kocsis from the BMC office.. Can you write an article on climbing in Leicestershire… 800 words with some pictures… no problem I thought now then, where to start, I thought. The old Leicestershire guide is as good as any…

“It is usually thought that there is little or no worthwhile climbing in Leicestershire. There are two reasons . The first is that there really isn’t a lot of climbing in Leicestershire and the second is that the guide book to what there is has been out of print for many years.”

This is the opening paragraph to the introduction of the Leicestershire Climbs guide book written by Geoff Mason and the late Ken Vickers.

Who would have thought that 14 years after it was published we would be summing up an article on climbing in Leicestershire referring to the situation that now bestows us. Although it is 14 years since the last guide went out of print, so much has changed in many places.

Leicestershire is one of the few areas where the vast majority of climbing focuses on quarries, it is an area where whole quarries have been known to disappear, Enderby, Crag Y or Whitwick to name but a few, or areas re appear as modern climbing takes on new forms and Bouldering and Sport Climbing become more fashionable as is evident in Cademan Woods or Morley Quarry. Although both were documented in the previous guide book, they were not deemed worthy of much coverage.

The climbs themselves tend to undergo similar technical rearrangements, which could be most embarrassing if you find your pleasant E1 5b is in reality a necky E3 5c only after committing yourself to the crux.

The access to climbing sites and areas is certainly one of the biggest challenges facing the Leicestershire Climber and those visiting the area. From the very first publications of climbing in Leicestershire and with the rise in popularity of the sport and more climbers out climbing, climbing areas in Leicester have had more owners, parish councils, administrators and wardens worry about their presence.

Fearing law suites, the impact on the a fragile environment and the arrival of crowds of dare devil climbers, more often than not simple ignorance of what the real impact will be or as to what the real essence of climbing is, has resulted in the access to numerous sites being threatened or simply banned.

Climbing is mainly about enjoyment, personal enjoyment. It doesn’t matter how you climb, or how hard you climb, as long as you enjoy your climbing and respect the crags, the ethics and the environment in which the climbing is situated.

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