Pennine Lines w/c 12 February 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 12 February 2024

Facing away from the afternoon sun, with boulders lurking among the twisted boughs of the trees, slow to dry but offering welcome shelter from strong westerlies in winter, with a few tall crag-based lines looming above the boulders, on the right day it’s a great spot to find a bit of peace. This part of the South Peak didn’t find its way onto the cover of Grit Blocs by accident.

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Pennine Lines w/c 5 February 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 5 February 2024

The bouldering is probably due a renaissance that will never happen, as it too is sort of unfashionable by today’s trends. There’s a lot of traverses, and a lot of holds which whilst not being that small per se, or sharp, are somehow just too crimpy or over-positive for comfort. Doing your comp-style problems down the wall isn’t really going to prepare you for this. Neither is all the board sessions on smooth lovingly crafted pinches. You’ve got to get into the pure filth, with a lot holds comprising various fingertip-bruising lumps you have to muller your hands into violently. Kudos wall in particular is one of those places you need to burn two or three sessions here just to deaden your finger pulp before you’re going to get anywhere. I suppose most people aren’t keen to make that sort of investment of time into it. The same goes for the hard routes - Zeke, Caviar, Dangerous Brothers, Tribes, The Sissy, even Salar and To Old To Be Bold can feel like feel like finger ruiners.

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Pennine Lines w/c 29 January 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 29 January 2024

The S7 mat covered an area of ground about the size of the phone you’re reading this on, hence the yellow target on the mat was a fortuitous addition. When you stared down between your shaking legs you at least had something to aim for, no matter how statistically slim your odds of hitting it were. You were aiming for the bull but considered yourself a winner if the dart even stuck in that sort of cabinet thing with the doors that you hang a dartboard in. Bounce-outs were common. The set of on-the-fly calculations and seat-of-pants dead reckoning required to land was on a par with the successful return of Apollo 13. Nevertheless, it totally changed the world for us, as it was already starting to change climbing over the next decade.

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Pennine Lines w/c 22 January 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 22 January 2024

Some words in the climbing world are so loaded with history and expectations that it’s impossible to actually assess the place objectively. Words that carry a lot of baggage one way or another. Just saying “Plantation” will elicit a response of some sort. It might spark memories of feeling like a hero cruising confidently on some airy line or other above a sea of onlookers, or finally solving the critical position and landing the top hold on your project as the winter sun sneaks out from behind a cloud. Or backing off Crescent Arête with trust in your footwork in tatters. An ankle-wrecking fall from high up on something, feet rapidly peddling an invisible bike down some tall arête, with the rest of your climbing year flashing before your eyes perhaps. Yep, the highs are high, and the lows are low at the Plantation. The soaring bulletproof arêtes, and the sandy battered orange holds and snappy flakes. Or maybe you’ve never been, so it’s a crag of the imagination yet to be experienced, which you’ve avoided because you’ve heard it’s always rammed.

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Pennine Lines w/c 15 January 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 15 January 2024

With the Millstone arête, I’ve not been on it, and you probably haven’t either, so we don’t really know. And to be honest, maybe it’s fine that certain things remain unclimbed. Sometimes these lines have as much value in their status as tantalising possibilities than they do as realised routes. They are nobodies route, nobody has their name on it in a guide, but simultaneously they belong to everyone. A great leveller. Maybe it HAS been climbed and whoever it was just didn’t tell anyone, now there’s a thought. Unclimbed lines leave possibilities open in the imagination, and these days climbing is so well documented, classified, instagrammed, videoed and photographed (guilty!) that sometimes there’s little space left for the imagined.

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Pennine Lines w/c 8 January 2024
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Pennine Lines w/c 8 January 2024

In fact, Rivelin is a classic winter venue, THE January crag. I swear some years have passed where it’s the only place I’ve found dry rock. Low lying and sheltered, yet open enough for that fine grained rock to dry fast; it’s a sun trap too and rarely feels as grim and bleak as other Sheffield local moorland crags. On a dull day it can seem like a brown crag for those brown January days, so it just fits. But it's even better when the low winter sun rakes through the bare trees, the light modelling the crag, shadows are cast and everything pops into relief. BOOM.

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