Pennine Lines w/c 1 December 2025
I was going to talk about surfing the unpredictable ebb and flow of psyche, of ageing, of competing with your younger self, of being steamrollered by the weight of expectation, then being buoyed on by an infinitesimally tiny success. Of the silent guilty resentment when everyone else gets their projects done except you. Of misjudging the conditions, going to the wrong crag, or going to the right crag at the wrong time. Of how there’s definitely a right time for certain things, for you, no matter how fleeting. And how if you can line things up on that day then almost anything is possible. Of how, conversely, if you force it the door slams shut.
Pennine Lines w/c 26 June 2023
This was one I actually had lined up to feature in Grit Blocs once I’d got some shots of Ned attempting this at the end of a long day mopping up some other photos for the book. It would have at the very least got a mention in the Swivel Finger section, or there was a chance it could have bumped that problem out entirely, as it looked superb, and as a long-standing project carried a bit of gravitas. In the end I visited once more with Ned but again we left empty handed, and in fact it took Ned until this April to seal the deal.
Pennine Lines w/c 29 May 2023
It will be interesting to see if fashions change on this over time, and also what the next ten or fifteen years will bring for the ambience at Kyloe-In. Will young trees start to grow back where the mature trees were felled and make recent felling seem a little less brutal, will the atmosphere of the crag change and evolve again? We'll have to wait and see.