Pennine Lines w/c 18 March 2024
|| Mixed || Glimpses Of Spring ||
Chabal at Gorple || Climber: Rob Smith
|| Focus On... ||
The Wild Stuff
I’m trying to avoid starting every email with a paragraph of existential dread about the weather. But it’s hard, as the pile-of-crap representing Winter ’24 (a.k.a. ‘Triple January’) has a gravity similar to your average neutron star, hence the opening paragraph tends to get sucked into its orbit unless it has the requisite escape velocity. This is all getting very meta so let’s move on and not get bogged down in obsessing about the weather in the same way we get bogged down in the sodden mud everywhere….
There have been signs that things are set to improve of late though. The days are definitely getting a lot longer, allowing us more daylight hours in which to enjoy the rain. Brilliant. Secondly, we have had the odd glimpse of sunshine and brief interludes of dryness bookending the rain, so that’s something to cling to. Let’s just hope when the dry weather finally comes it won’t immediately rocket to the mid-20s straight away.
Wild Garlic in Cucklett Delph || Fuji Provia
Thirdly, and best; the wild garlic is out. Filling the damp wooded valleys and riversides of the Sheffield woods and the White Peak (and not to mention Anston Stones) with lush aromatic leafy greens, wild garlic is one of the delights of spring. For years I tended to associate the mildly pungent aroma as being the smell of early summer limestone, although this year since the limestone has barely been dry it might just have to be satisfied with being the smell of wild garlic - which isn’t a bad thing.
Thinking back to the infuriatingly good weather we endured during the first Covid lockdown in 2020, one of the additional bonuses I enjoyed during our state-sanctioned daily excursions out of the house was rediscovering wild garlic as an actual foodstuff. Look, you couldn’t get hold of flour so you had to supplement your diet somehow. I know you didn’t sign up for lifestyle tips but I’ll just say if you pick a load of wild garlic leaves then knock seven bells out of them in a pestle & mortar then you’ve got the start of a fairly life-changing pesto experience. Give it some thought next time you head out - the limestone dales aren’t there just for the crimping.
Two Pocket Wall at Gorple || Climber: Matt Thompson
Moving away from limestone for a second, from wild garlic to wild gritstone, I realised I had posted about some plans for the winter grit season about six months ago. Looking back on those now I am definitely going to play the bad weather card. Although I did managed to get to Hawcliffe and Crookrise - notably before the weather took a nosedive - I haven’t made it back to Brandreth, Red Rooster or Gorple yet. There’s still time, fingers crossed. I tend to think April is usually the best month of the year so there’s still reason for optimism.
Gorple in particular is somewhere that I don’t really have a specific reason to go back to, other than it just having a lovely feel about it, and I suppose that’s enough. Not everything in climbing needs to be project oriented, it’s good to put some time aside for the experience. Wild yet domesticated, a long but easy walk, quiet but with a reservoir and a huge shooting cabin right in front of the crag, Gorple is one of those greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts places. It also challenges the often-cited Yorkshire grit stereotype of everything being basic on positive holds, a cliche I think that if it does hold true then its only really applicable to the Wharfedale band of grit (Earl, Ilkey, Caley etc). That wisdom is certainly flipped on its head around the Widdop area, with the grit up at the likes of Gorple, Scout Hut and Clattering Stones really being that archetypal moorland grit with more rounded shapes. The Grit Blocs pick from these parts, Chabal, typifies the weird full-bodied sloper wrestling but there’s plenty more where this came from across the grade spread.
Looking back into the photo archive I had a good couple of trips to Gorple in April in previous years so there’s still time yet. And let’s not forget it often stays pretty cool up there well into summer if there’s a breeze, so there’s no excuse really. Lovely stuff. Having made it this far without mentioning the weather I will quit while I’m ahead now.
Shooting Cabin || Gorple
|| Bannisters Against Genocide ||
We ran a little fundraiser this week on Instagram and managed to generate a couple of hundred quid for a good cause. If anyone who missed it wants to jump in - get in touch. A huge thanks to those who bought prints and hopefully made a bit of different to someone somewhere; absolute legends.
|| Supported By ||
|| Recently Through the lens ||
Violence, a Burbage South micro-classic in the quarry
|| Fresh Prints ||
More of a flavour of spring the Peak this week from the Print Shop.
