Ali, my housemate, and myself thought we’d get an early start last Sunday seeing as the sun was up and it was relatively warm. By 9.30am we had a lovely drive past Windermere and great views of the Lake and the Langdale Pikes. We drove through the leafy country lanes past Chapel Stile and just past the village we arrived at a layby (on the right) and a gate on the left, which leads to the Langdale Boulders.
From the category archives:
Crags
UK Crags – what they’re like and how to find them. If you would like to tell us about your favourite crag, email us at: gareth(at)rockclimbinguk.co.uk
I’m a little bit hesitant about reviewing Yarncliffe as it is already popular and has already been overused as a learning venue for novices. Abseiling and top roping in inappropriate footwear has caused premature aging to many of the best routes.
Being a nine to five (well 7:30 – 5:30 if I’m being honest) office slave, I get extremely frustrated with the whole British summer weather cycle of beautiful sunshine all week and rain all weekend. To make the situation even worse, David, my brother and regular climbing partner, works Saturdays. This means that we have effectively only got Sundays to play out, unless we book well in advance.
With the advent of the lighter, summer evenings I suggested that rather than climb indoors at Rock City in Hull, we try to get to a crag and climb outdoors. The only problem being is that it takes around an hour and a half to get to Hathersage from my place, which means we need to be away early to get a decent climb.
Last Friday I suggested we head of early and have a go up at Lawrencefield or Millstone. Unfortunately David couldn’t get away early. The earliest he could make it would have got us there for around 7:30pm – not worth it! As David is only about 3 miles from Filey, I suggested that we climb at Filey Brigg.
Wharncliffe is a bit of a dark horse.
With it’s lowly aspect overlooking the steel rolling mills of Stocksbridge, and the fact that most of its routes are only between 8 and 14 metres you might be forgiven for overlooking it as a decent rock climbing venue. I urge you to take another look, I climbed there last Sunday and I have to say I thought it was actually really rather good.
I think I would have enjoyed my day rock climbing at Birchen Edge if it hadn’t been the consolation prize for what should have been a full weekend’s climbing in North Wales. David and I had driven over to the Llanberis Pass on the Friday night, only to leave on Saturday morning after a night of torrential rain and gale-force winds. The weather was OK on Sunday morning so we opted for a trip to the Peak District.
We decided to call off at Hathersage and visit the Outside climbing shop as we needed some new kit, so we looked in our climbing book for routes nearby. We had already climbed at Millstone and Lawrencefield, so we elected to give the fairly nearby Birchen Edge a try.
My brother David and I had planned to go to Scotland and climb Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis this weekend. Unfortunately, the Met Office told us that the weather was set to be pretty poor.
We sat down and looked for a crag that we could climb in Yorkshire which has routes 20m and over. David has a book by ROCKFAX called Northern England, in which we found the perfect candidate, Ilkley.
Lawrencefield is a fantastic crag. It has what I consider to be the most important attributes of a good climbing venue:
* It’s quiet
* It’s tall (for the Peak District) – some of the climbs are almost 30m
* There’s some really fantastic climbs, whether you’re a V Diff or E1 leader
If you can lead up to HS standard, you will absolutely love this venue as there are some really pleasurable and rewarding climbs in the lower grades.
