Pennine Lines w/c 15 July 2024

PLWeeklyEmail

16 Jul

Written By Dave Parry

|| Warm, damp || Dust off your berry comb ||

|| Focus On... ||

Low Season

In the iconic ‘90s climbing film The Real Thing, Jerry Moffatt sits in the courtyard of a Fontainebleau gite, ill-prepared for the French sun beating down, and with a salmon-pink vest draped over his head proclaims to camera “you can’t beat drizzle and smog and mist”. Whilst at a superficial level this is confusing as smog hasn’t really been a feature of British weather since the 1950s and the shift away from heavy industry and widespread domestic use of coal fires, it does point to something embedded in our culture. Dull, damp and grey weather is like England being eliminated in the knockout stages of international football competitions, we don’t like it, but we expect it. Business as usual.

Nevertheless, July in the Peak still is, I have to say, a hard work month. Never mind climbing, even landscape photography yields diminishing returns for inconvenient camera aficionados like me. The moors are smothered with monocolour head-height bracken, dulling the shapely contours of the land and filling the air with the smell closely associated with ticks and midges, the latter taking every opportunity to capitalise on even momentary drops in the wind. The light is as flat as a UEFA-accredited football pitch. The heather isn’t flowering yet, save for the odd iridescent patch of bell heather taunting us as we fly past in the car. The kids are knackered, itching to be off school, and annoyed with Kane’s performance. Even writing a weekly inspirational climbing-adjacent email becomes an uphill battle.

Dull quiet light; gritstone and bilberries || Stanage Far Noth

This summer it seems we’ve dodged the heatwaves of recent years and just gone for an old-school British July. Dull, uninspiring. Fine by me from the perspective of not wanting to spend 24 hours a day sweating like Prince Andrew doesn't. But even still, July is often the nadir of the limestone summer psyche rollercoaster, the point when the thoughts of cool gritstone start to gang up on you again, for a minute ignoring the fact that with that means shorter days and even worse weather. So what’s to do?

Although we try and shut ourselves out of the natural rhythm of the crags and the climbing year with lights, fans, tarps, tinfoil, and not least indoor climbing, it’s worth recognising the ebb and flow of the climbing seasons. It’s as normal as the sun rising and setting, and it’s also fine for enthusiasm to wax and wane in unison with this too, despite what the relentless tide of social media content sometimes implies.

Time to get up high and explore? || Ashop Edge, Kinder

So in the short term you have to just go with the flow of the dull grey damp days, mix things up with a trip away if you can, and take the little wins when they arrive if you can’t. For a start, the bilberries are out; salvation arriving in the form of tiny droplets of dark sweetness. And where you can’t win, you can always double down on the grimness - the crimpy sharp greasy limestone. Fight fire with fire. If you don’t experience it in terrible conditions then you can’t really appreciate the good days when things cool off. I sometimes think it’s possible to actually climb better in poor conditions anyway, as the weight of expectation is lifted. Or failing that, just count the days till you’re next sat outside a French gite, baking in the sun, like Jerry, semi-ironically serenading the dull British weather. The cycle continues…..