Dave MacLeod Climbing

The big ride

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:44:00 +0000

Gaz Marshall getting ready for a rollercoaster ride on Firestone E7 6b, Cairngorm. Click on the pics for a bigger view.

Last week I had an excellent day out with Gaz over on Hells Lum. Gaz was after his first E7 and had been working on the unrepeated (?) E7 Firestone by Julian Lines. Firestone is a perfect piece of granite. Worn perfectly smooth by ice and water, it’s quite beautiful to look at. It’s also quite weird, if you stand on a particular part of the hillside, it looks easy angled enough to almost run up. I can tell you, it doesn’t feel like that when you are on it.

Gaz was clearly juggling the sense of being within striking distance of leading his project that day with the questions about when is the right moment to go for it. How much des excitement cloud the judgement. Only experience tells you. And experience is got the hard way and no other.

So, he went to find out, and started padding up the slab. I hung on a rope and shot pictures for some time as he got higher and higher, but suddenly became aware that he’d stopped one move before the end of the difficult section, and everything had seemed to go nauseatingly silent. Still looking through the lens, I felt my mouth go dry as I watched him try several times to replace a sliding foot before suddenly launching both hands into the air, windmilling wildly and shouting “NAHHH I”M OFF”.

I wondered what to do. As he turned and fell, I realised I was most likely about to watch a mate break his legs. So quick thinking allowed me to put off bracing myself for it by simply carrying on shooting pictures as he went for the big ride down the slab.

I can tell you he was going pretty damn fast by now!

Impressive body pasting to maximise sliding friction, together with a fine land-and-roll down the boulders technque. Allowed Gaz to take the 12 metre fall, then get up and start laughing his head off. Thank god for that.

Claire reckons it’s witnessing scary climbing antics from behind a lens than from belaying. But this did me little good when it was my turn to solo Firestone next. I made it, but I must say I prefer having holds to squeeze harder when I get scared. Full points for steeliness went to Gaz though for limping back over to the route, walking wounded, and going back up it to finish the job! A fine example of grit you don’t see very often now.

Going for it second time round

This doesn't really need a caption, does it? Gaz’s blog about the adventure is here.

The Prophet of Purism

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Onsighting Prophet of Purism E6 6a Glen Coe. The number of runners clipped to the rope give away what this climb is all about.

During the early nineteen eighties in Scotland, any climbing was trad climbing, and the focus for the best climbers of the day sounded like it was very much about how death defying the climbs were, rather than difficulty, as things have leaned to these days.

Or at least it certainly was for Dave Cuthbertson, who was climbing better and bolder than anyone in the country at the time. Dave’s drive was to push himself further and further towards the limits of being in control with the maximum possible constraints and risks in the climbing situation, and try to stay on top [i.e. alive].

The more intimidating the cliff, the poorer the protection, the purer the style the better. Even talking to Dave about loose rock, he tells me “I used to revel in all that stuff”. Most of the time on Scottish mountain cliffs, climbing new routes onsight (in the modern sense) is either a pretty messy business, or a suicidal one. One some cliffs, like Lewissean Gneiss, it’s no problem, the rock is clean, sound and the routes tend to give many of their secrets away on visual inspection from below. On others, dirt and loose rock would make climbing first ascents onsight a reliable path to an early grave. Of course it’s fine up to a certain grade (for most this might be the mid E-grades). But as soon as dynamic movement comes into the equation the risk spirals and rapidly overtakes the romance of the ideal.

The highpoint of this highly dangerous pursuit, for me at least, was Dave’s onsight first ascent of Prophet of Purism E6 6a in Glen Coe. Naturally there have been better performances since, but often on more predictable rock types like granite or Gneiss as I mentioned before. But to climb this overhanging wall covered in hollow snappy loose edges with so little protection has always seemed to be an outstanding example of sheer bottle. It’s what climbing used to be largely about for many people, and although its well out of fashion now, it still impresses. Or at least makes us shake our heads in disbelief.

And inevitably more so if you hear the climbing story first hand. Dave told me about doing a massive traverse across an overhanging wall, pumped and committed and facing a 20 or 30 metre fall and swing into the slabby bluffs beneath the wall. At the end of the traverse he ended up grappling in extremis on opposing press holds in a niche which was completely overgrown with wet moss, slipping and gasping for breath and calm.

I figured, at some point, sooner or later, I better go up and try it myself, if only to have a shadow of this experience. Dave launched across this traverse into the blankness of glen Coe wall without the knowledge of what was across there - a block pulled off, a move too hard, and a terminal fall. I launched across it knowing it was E6 6a, and most of the holds tested for me. Still, it was very cool to pull quickly into the niche, not realising and stretching from a press to another and suddenly dawning that I was in the same move as Cubby told me about.

Because I could relax in the knowledge that no really hard cruxes were coming, I felt ok on the traverse and was feeling like the final ten feet of overhang above should be a jog for home. But every hold felt totally detachable, 35 metres up and without a runner that would stop me. Sensitive climbing with a very reserved and calculated movements does get you through loose rock climbing, but I’m no expert at it. Maybe it was because this part wasn’t even worth a mention for Cubby that gave me a wee fright because I thought I should be home and dry by this point and had relaxed too much. I had the gift of being able to play the game of telling myself “these holds have been pulled on before, they won’t come off!!

After a hurried grapple over onto the Big Top flake, I took a moment to respect a very very bold standard by Cubby to be able to keep cool on this terrain without knowing which holds would take his weight.

I’d like to try a modest experiment in this type of climbing shortly, and know a line that could be around E7. Nearly 30 years after Cubby did Prohpet of Purism, the game wont be too much different. Fitness will matter a little, sure. But this game comes down to what is in your head. Interesting stuff.

The prophet wall on Aonach Dubh, Glen Coe. Prophet of Purism goes up the right side of the wall before doing a massive traverse line across the wall to eventually gain the left arete (Big Top).

Cubby's arete went down

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:49:00 +0000

Mid crux on Kolus E8 6c, Torridon (click on the images for a large pic)

It’s a funny thing, that just because it’s thought of as being remote, there’s still not that many people that know how good the north west of Scotland is. I suppose it’s a good thing, for those that know. Torridonian sandstone is one of the finest rock types I’ve ever seen. It’s very similar to Gritstone and, sometimes, Northumbrian sandstone, but better on the whole, than both.

Dave Cuthbertson told me years ago about a really outstanding quality arete project he’d been trying that would be E8 7a at least. He spoke about it several times, and eventually told me where it was and to go and try it. I knew by the way Cubby talked about it, that when I finally went there, I would kick myself for not going much earlier. And so I did.

If it was on grit, the arete left of The Torridonian on Seana Mheallan would be one of the hailed true grit classics. But it’s in Torridon, so it’s sat there quietly, just being perfect on it’s own, with hardly any climbers knowing about it.

Yesterday I had a chance to go there with Jamie and Claire, feeling good, with a cold wind forecast. At first we thought it might be too cold to even get warmed up. Fully baltic! Gritstoners should try this place out rather than be starved of friction over summer in the English heat.

During the past three months, nearly every time I’ve gone climbing I’ve felt guilty because I’ve been so behind with all my work because of the volume of it and other things going on. But now finally I’m getting within spitting distance of catching up with overdue work and after a good 14 computer screen hours the day before, I felt justified in going climbing for a whole day without worrying about late work. I want more of that!

I got a bit of a fright snapping an important pebble foothold off at the crux on my last toprope practice. Scary stuff. Thank god it wasn’t on the lead. Jamie said he got a bit nervous when some really big gusts of wind were whipping around the arete just as I was heading for the crux on the lead. It was really windy but it amazed me how the second I started climbing, the wind didn’t even register in my consciousness. For me, everything was completely silent until I was holding the jug on the lip of the slab.

Beautiful Glen Torridon

After my lead was done, we went off to try two more amazing projects, possibly even better in quality, with quite exquisite moves on grit smears. One of the routes, I’m hoping could get led on the next visit, the other is E10. Enough said.

If the summer can keep producing routes like this, I’ll be a lucky man. Claire shot these photos. But we also shot a little footage of the hard part of Kolus with the camera just running on the tripod. I’ll post up a wee youtube shortly.

Jamie sorts out ropes

Mid June in the sunshine. Still baltic!

Andy Kirkpatrick DVD released in my shop today

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:41:00 +0000

Today, the When Hell Freezes Over DVD of Andy’s famous side splitting lecture is released. It’s available in my webshop now for £11.99, with as ever, my ebook How to Climb Hard Trad that I’m still giving away with all my DVD and book orders. It is indeed a right good laugh.

Andy’s lecture was filmed live in Stornoway last December and even Andy forgets that he’s meant to be talking about climbing in Patagonia. He’s too busy making us laugh, for 110 minutes.

If you fancy it, it’s in the shop here.

The search

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Although I am doing some more onsight climbing again this summer, I’m feeling more and more strongly that I’m missing a hard project. I’ve written about this before here, but it never fails to surprise how big an effect on me this has. Many people ask me after lectures if I feel pressure from outside to do more big new routes, because this is what I’m ‘supposed to do’. But this pressure is nothing except a need from within, and an extremely strong one it seems.

This strength of feeling to find a hard project to focus my efforts and bring the best out of me can feel like a magic feeling when you have a project. But when you don’t, it can feel like a source of insipid torture. In a nutshell, right now I feel kind of restless, but at a level rather more than I can just shrug off. To be perfectly open, it’s getting me down a little.

Naturally there is one simple way out of this; to go out and find a project. This is a search I have been intermittently starting over the past month and will be doing a lot more of in the next couple. But this is not as simple as it sounds. I often feel that it should be, given the abundance of unclimbed rock about. But it doesn’t seem to be so easy to find the right projects. Perhaps this is why they are so captivating when you do find them. Achemine, Holdfast, Rhapsody, Sanction, Metalcore, Ring of Steall and Echo Wall were all examples of perfect projects and I was so lucky to have them. But I have to admit that life without this drug is difficult for me - I need to find more.

This thought was brought into my mind after talking with Arnaud Petit while at a film festival in the Pyrenees last week. Arnaud recognised how hard it is to find a project that is impossible at first acquaintance, in order that it forces you to reach a new level, but ultimately possible to make progress and maybe eventually climb it. This and with good quality rock and line too. It’s rare. We saw this with Rhapsody which is a brilliant and rewarding climb in many ways, yet imperfect. Echo Wall is probably the most perfect project I’ve found yet, hence I could give more to it than ever before.

Now I am searching the crags for something bigger, harder and if it’s possible; better than Echo Wall. I might find it next week, it might take years. Doesn’t matter too much I guess. The longer it takes the keener I will be when I find it.

Looking west from Binnien Shuas past Ben Nevis and Aonach Mor. Maybe somewhere out there is a really hard project?

Maybe it's Glen Torridon? Turns out it's not. Spent a couple of of days here and found a brilliant E7, E8 and E10 to do, which hopefully I can do sometime soon. But nothing harder found so far.

Earning the raspberry cheesecake

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:35:00 +0000

For the past two and a half years, Morrisons in Fort William have stocked a delightful looking raspberry cheesecake, placed according to the conventions of supermarket choice architecture, right in my line of sight as I head for the milk. I can’t miss it, every time.

I love raspberry cheesecake, but as a climber who isn’t naturally light enough for the grades I want to climb, I feel that I must set limits, and something like that - an out and out treat - is the most obvious target. This is why I’m two stones (28 pounds) lighter than I was at 16 years of age and can climb many grades harder too. Don’t get me wrong, I eat plenty (and I mean plenty!) when I know I’m using the energy.

Since I first spotted it, I’ve been tempted every time I’m in there to buy it and munch it. But I didn’t. At first I thought “when I do the Ring of Steall Project, I’ll buy that cheesecake”. I sent the project, but not the cheesecake. Then, I thought, “when I finally top out on Don’t Die, I’m having that bloody cheesecake out of Morrisons”. But I didn’t. Eventually, it was “When I do Echo Wall, this time I’m definitely eating the cheesecake”, and then “when I’ve edited the film” etc. You get the picture.

I’ve picked it up at least four times, and had it in my basket and put it back twice. What’s going on here? Nothing seems to be big enough to deserve the damn cheesecake. Today I picked it up and stared at it again, and put it back, unable to think of anything I’d done that even remotely deserved to break the previous cheesecake denial.

What the hell do I have to do to earn the cheesecake?

I’ve done this more and more over the past 8 years. When I did my first E9 in 2001, I went out with my mates from Uni, got steaming drunk, went clubbing and woke up to a brain melting hangover the next afternoon. Later, when I was repeatedly throwing myself from the last move of Rhapsody, my mate Steve Gordon speculated that the only celebration worthy of doing the world’s first E11 would be to go out and take 11 E’s. We negotiated it down so that I would settle for 11 pints and he would take the 11 E’s. But when I did it, I stayed at home for three months and learnt what HTML was and built up this website.

Richard told me if I ever managed to drag myself up a 9a, we were definitely, definitely hitting the town for a hardcore night. But there was training to be done, and good conditions and bla bla.

You may ask yourself, am I going somewhere with this? The answer I’m afraid, for the moment, is not really. This post is an open question I suppose: Just what deserves the cheesecake???

I’ve echoed the thoughts of many others before in stressing the importance of the process of what you do and finding enjoyment in that, rather than the result at the end. So in one sense, celebration of successes is a bit meaningless. Why celebrate when the enjoyable part (the thing you are celebrating) is over. Celebrate by finding the next thing. Obviously that only counts for certain types of things - especially very individual successes like in certain types of climbing. Where things are about people sharing or collaborating, it’s different!

So maybe I’ve got my thinking the wrong way round? Is the finding of a new hard project worthy of the cheesecake, rather than the completion of it? In the next month I am going to try a project I expect to be quite a lot harder than Echo Wall. If that proves the right thing for me to dedicate myself to, should I head for Morrisons? I might have just persuaded myself…

Full disclosure: I looked at the cheesecake today not so much for me, but as I was buying food to make Claire a nice meal on her return from a trip tomorrow. Now before you accuse me of letting my own weird and eccentric ways spill over onto those around me, I should stress that after returning the cheesecake to the shelf, I bought a packet of Rice Krispies and a big pack of no less than eight Mars Bars to make Rice Krispy squares (both our favourite).

Thinking about meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:15:00 +0000

Several people over the years have asked me if I meditate (as training for hard and bold climbing). I always used to say ‘no, I don’t think so’. I certainly didn’t sit down in a field and deliberately try to meditate. But more recently when I was asked again I knew the answer. Yes, I do. But I do not meditate, and then go climbing. The climbing is the meditation. I didn’t realise it for a long time.

A lot of people will squirm at the sight of the word meditation. It carries a lot of hippy connotations and seems pretty far from most peoples every day lives, including their sport. But, like other words I commonly deal with like ‘training’ or ‘risk’, it’s the baggage that we’ve attached to the word that seems weird or uncomfortable. The activity itself is quite simply to focus the mind.

It takes a lot of effort to get a true meditative experience, whether it’s by finding the time to sit still and managing the shrug off all the noise that modern life throws at us, or having a really pure, highly concentrated effort on a climb. I really think that you get what you put in here.

I think that sports in general could be a lot more rewarding as activities and especially as therapy to recover from the shit we have to go through in ‘real life’ if this coupling of meditation and sport was better recognised, and people were better at tapping into it.

Note to self: think about this more for coaching climbing...

In the footsteps of…

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:43:00 +0000

One of the cool things about climbing is that when you read or hear good stories about climbs that inspire you, those climbs are there for you to go and actually experience. Whether it’s a nice boulder problem your mate raved about, or a big mountain epic shrouded in legend from it’s first ascent stories. Many other sports don’t have this. You hear about football fans standing on the pitch and using their imagination to feel the intensity of big games played out by the stars on the same spot over the years. Not much to go on really, is it?

But if you are a climber, you can have more than this. You can go and repeat the very same routes, pull on the same holds, make the same movements on the rock and feel the same fear, just as in the story you read about as a youngster. With every move you make up the route, the

first ascent story takes on a new illumination. This is pretty lucky I think.

I just had this experience tonight, onsighting the second ascent (??) of Chairoscuro E7 6b in Glen Nevis. This climb was put up with great determination by Kevin Howett and Andy Nelson in 1988, with Kev’s lead being his hardest ever.

left: Kevin Howett

I read Kev’s account of his first ascent just after I’d started climbing, and just after I’d had a bit of a defining moment in my life visiting Glen Nevis for the first time with Claire when I was 17 and being totally inspired by the place and the multitude of climbs there. Kev’s lead sounded unbelievably bold, taking a huge fall from near the top of the blunt arete of Chairoscuro onto an RP1, and breaking his ribs on the swing in. But he returned soon after, taking more falls from the same spot until he nailed it.

This sounds crazy enough just reading about it, but it’s something completely different to actually be there yourself, wobbling and gibbering through off-balance rockover onto a sloping rail after 35 metres of E7 climbing, when that RP1 is so far below you can’t even see it.

This would have been a great climbing experience for me if I knew nothing about the route. But to be there knowing Kev had fallen from that move and come back for more added a whole other dimension to it. You don’t get this when you turn up at a crag in Spain and look at a bunch of lines on a topo with a number attached. This is the depth that trad climbing has, that other types cannot match. Of course their qualities lie elsewhere - thats fine.

This route was also a personal score settled. I had previously gone to have a try at the route onsight with Niall McNair about seven years ago. At the time we were both onsighting stacks of E6s and I had a couple of E7 onsights under my belt. We tied in and started up Chairoscuro feeling confident. Too confident it seemed. After 4 metres (count them!) we went off route and immediately ran out of holds or any gear and reversed down, confused.

It was strange coming back several years later. It really hit home how different the rock looks with experience behind you. It took me five minutes to spot a sequence through some unobvious quartz knobbles we had completely failed to spot last time.

With that in mind, when I finally committed to the section where Kev fell, I reminded myself as I rocked over, wobbling that I had a lot to throw at the next few moves - experience, experience, experience, and a bit of raw crimp strength too I guess.

I hope it’s nice for Kevin to know that his creation back in 1988 was something that bubbled away in my head for some years and imagined many times what it would be like to be alone up on that arete, onsight and scared. It was just as good as I hoped.

The last six weeks in pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Regular readers of my blog will know that I'm just back online after a couple of months away from my normal routine of blogging. It's strange for me to think that I've been writing this blog since mid 2006 and especially when I meet people who tell me they've read it regularly all that time. I still think that starting it was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and it's contained some of the best work I've produced as a person.

However, a break is always good to rest and refresh the mind, and although I quite enjoyed my daily routine not involving a computer for a little while, I must admit I've been going through a serious crisis of confidence in my blogging. I'm not worried about it really, It's a good thing to question whether you could improve or take what you do in a different direction. I'm sure the time to reflect a little on what this blog is, and could be, will be exactly what it needs to become something better.

Anyway, now my house is in order, I can put down the hammers, spades and screwdrivers and start hammering the keyboard again. To fill in a little of the last six weeks while I was offline, fixing stuff around the house or off around Europe giving talks, here are some pics from my iphoto... (click on them for a bigger image)

Drew makes the top out

And thank god for that.

Scary rope after falling off an 8c in Siurana

Bloc with a view. I climbed a lovely new V10 traverse here in April, with a V13 extention in the project book for the autumn. the topo is on page 129 of the Scottish Bouldering guidebook

The Ben looking pretty on a March morning

Puss puss attempted an ascent of our chimney and paid the ultimate price (a bath)

Claire attacks the garden before it attains rainforest status

Ready to plant my tatties

Fingers crossed I'll for a fine harvest this autumn. Tatties, carrots, cabbages, lettuce, celery, onions and, of course, broccoli ; )

Enjoying the space beneath your feet on Angel Face E2, Far East Wall, Beinn Eighe

Blair heads off into the Sky on Moonshine E4, Beinn Eighe

PS: is it just me, or has picasa's jpeg compression on it's blogger image uploader got worse?? Anyone else noticed this on their blogs? Does anyone have any good recommendations for photo upload sites with decent compression?

Another King line...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Blair 5 metres in to the big traverse project, just 25 to go. (click the pic for a big version)

After I bagged the E8 Donald King pointed me at the other night, I gave Donald a bell to say thanks for the tip off. Always a man for knowing what’s out there, yet seemingly right under our nose, he came back with another recommendation to look at.

This time spoke about a long limestone crag with potential for a very hard and long traverse along the overhanging base, again something that might ‘have my name on it’. A limestone crag, with good friction, with a 30-40 metre overhanging traverse project that might stay dry in the rain, half an hour from Fort William??? If it had been anyone else I would have told them to pull the other one.

But it wasn’t. So today Blair and myself went to check things out. It was even better than I expected! I spent four hours working out the moves on the massive rising traverse, often on big burly undercuts with absorbing technical but really powerful climbing. Brilliant stuff. By the time I’d made several short links along it, I was ready to lie down and sleep in the evening sun.

I think this one will come in about route grade 8c or 8c+. Every time I tried to link I was thinking more 8c+. There’s my endurance training through the rest of June right there!

I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Thanks again Donald, thats two pints I owe you.

Dream Holds review

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:23:00 +0000

My friend Scott emailed recently looking for some pictures for a brochure he was putting together for his new range of holds. He already runs a business making climbing walls but this is his first venture into the area of manufacturing climbing holds.

I mentioned I might buy some holds from him for my soon to be finished board and he offered to give me a load to try out! I told him I’d get a review up on here to share my thoughts on his range, since they are a bit different to what you are probably used to pulling on ‘down the wall’.

Scott has done what many people have attempted over the years, right back to the earliest climbing walls - mimic real rock. The reason? Well, there are two separate reasons really. Firstly, real rock formations are clearly more varied and aesthetic both in the shapes they form and the movements that result from them. The other quite obvious reason is that if you are training to climb real rock, training on something as close to it as possible is a rather good idea.

But so many hold manufacturers have moved away from ‘rock-like’ shapes and gone for highly synthetic smooth shapes in recent years. I guess this reflects how indoor climbing has separated a little more from outdoor climbing for an ever greater proportion of climbing wall users - perhaps mimicking real rock hasn’t seemed so important as indoor climbing has become so much more of an activity in it’s own right?

All fair enough of course, but where there is a lot of ying, some yang often makes a pleasant change. Scott’s Dream Holds are definitely full strength yang.

There is another fine reason why hold manufacturers have gone down the smooth and sleek route with rounded blobs in abundance; they are kind on the skin and body. Smooth, rounded and fine grained holds are definitely easier to train on for a long time before sore skin sets in. But this comes at a cost. The movements these holds lend themselves to are predictable, often fast, and basic (in certain aspects of the movement at least). Ever noticed that your grade indoors is waay higher than outdoors? This is the most common reason.

So, Scott has gone fully the opposite way and provided an alternative, making no compromises and taken moulds directly from our finest rock types, from chunks hand picked for their loveliness/evilness (these may be interchangeable terms for lovers of training for rock climbing).

What has come out is a range of holds with a true variety in every aspect, just like you’d get visiting a different rock venue on a road trip. There is glassy smooth, there is Gabbro cheese-grater rough, there is spiky sharp, massive, tiny and just plain weird. Exactly what you find on the crag.

To climb on, you have to slow down a bit overall because it’s not obvious at all how to take the hold on first acquaintance. There is much more udging, adjusting and matching hands than you normally find on indoors, exactly the types of moves indoor climbers often fail to spot when climbing outside. These minor adjustments, you could call them ‘components’ of whole moves that you get so commonly on real rock are what provides much of the pleasure in rock movement; the feeling that a small adjustment made such a huge difference. For sure this will be good for those who climb indoors for the purpose of training for outdoors.

But even for those who don’t, these will be a very welcome break from the mundane blob pulling experience that is rather too common these days. Every climbing centre should have at least a few routes of these I think. In fact I think these holds will be at their best on F6 to low F7 graded routes on more friendly angles that make up the bulk of what climbing walls must set.

My personal experience is a little different from most, given that my indoor training is purely strength training since I get a fair bit of time on real rock. My requirements are very much something skin friendly enough to pound away for hours on a 45 degree overhang and be limited only by muscle fatigue. But even though Dream Holds are sometimes a little hard on the skin for high end training sessions, I’d still have many of them on my board as it’s just not possible to source manufactured holds with certain grip positions these provide.

Good work overall by Scott and I’d expect to see them in most climbing walls in a year or two. The range still needs a bit of expanding - more pockets and super incuts please! But these are only just off the first moulds so plenty of time to develop more.

Scott has made a couple of neat patents with some technology to stop the holds spinning or breaking, but I’ll let him explain these on the Dream Holds site. Currently available in Gabbro, Torridonian Sandstone, Gritstone, and Gneiss, with Dumbarton Basalt, Mica Schist and granite on the way.

Dream Holds are here.

No substitute

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:57:00 +0000

Inimitable E8 6c, Styx Buttress, Glen Nevis

A couple of weeks ago I had a message on my phone from my friend Donald King of Abacus Mountaineering. Donald is always a psyched man and a very positive person to be around; training sessions with him in the ice factor are particularly hard on the abs from laughing too much.

Anyway, Donald was on about a new line in Glen Nevis he’d tried with the steely fingered Ewan of Glen Coe. “Way too hard for me buddy, but it might have your name on it?” the message said. Before I left for a festival in France last week I took a wander past it. A classic hard grit style route, 30 feet of F8a with a couple of wires just too low to feel useful as you slap your way into a rounded scoop, iron-crossed between distant sidepulls.

Last night, bleary eyed after the return trip from France, I rendezvoused with Kevin for a crack at it. We laughed as I abbed down it about how messed up it is that we might think “excellent, the protection is even worse than it looks”.

After some tries the moves came together, but I was a bit tired after an hour or so on it and we hung around, slowly being eaten by the midge as the cool wind dropped and was replaced by midgy warm, still humidity. Just what you need for a solid E8 lead.

I was about to sack it off but on the way back from a wash in the river to get rid of the nasty anti midge cream (together with creamed midges), the wind suddenly reappeared for a moment. All I needed was ten minutes of breeze.

I threw my harness on, swallowed hard and launched up past the RPs with dilated pupils and Roosevelt’s quote “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself" ringing in my ears.

That was all fine until I got to the crux move, Feet not quite right on the smears, hands not quite right on the crimps, bum sagging and the realisation that I’m probably looking at a broken leg in three seconds time.

There is no substitute for this feeling. Real consequences, right now, no chance to think about them, only to react instantly to your last second of chance to save yourself. This brings out the best in ability, in creativeness, in excitement and in satisfaction. I threw for the hold and arced back, sure I was falling off. Kev was turning to run. In that split second I was able to think and understand what this meant and that I had to dig deeper. So I did.

That last bit is the crucial bit for me - If it wasn’t for the real consequences, I would have fallen. The real danger was essential to the experience. There is no substitute.

The new facility

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:48:00 +0000

Quite a few of you were asking if I would post up some pics of my home board as I built it. I was planning to blog as it happened, but sadly I was still sans internet connection so it had to wait.

It’s all done and dusted now and I must say I’m pretty chuffed with it and wearing down the holds already. I filled the room with as much 45 degree board as possible, with a small roof at the end for extended circuits. As well as some of Scott’s Dream Holds (review on the way) and Entreprises crimpers, I enjoyed making some holds out of wood although I’m no skilled woodworker let me tell you. My wood crimps are quite nice creations though.

The board ended up being about 47 degrees and It’s pretty amazing how such a small angle change makes a big difference to the training effect. I really noticed a gain in body power in a few sessions, and after returning to my familiar 45’ problems at the ice factor, found myself noticeably stronger on big powerful moves.

It’ll take a few months to get used to the board and set a cadre of nice problems, tweak hold positions etc. But it’ll be super interesting to see the longer term effect on my climbing. I’ve waited a long time to take this experiment!

How nice is it though, to have things exactly as I would want them. I spent several years nagging Glasgow Climbing Centre and then the Ice Factor to install a simple fan to keep conditions for training cool and dry to conserve finger skin, but they never went for it.

I’ll keep you posted on the effects of the new facility, and hopefully get some more hold reviews up etc..

making a mess

puss puss oversees the drilling of the panels

DIY'ed out

Feeling like a kid in a climbing hold shop

What do you think?

Getting Connected

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Finally, after three months on a waiting list, we are connected to the internet here in Letterfinlay, albeit rather shakily. It’s really a bit of a relief. However, I still don’t even have a stable enough connection to run a software update.

Our ISP is a London company called Avanti Communications. We need to get out connection via satellite here since we are too far from the telephone exchange to get any useful connection. That said, I’m beginning to wonder if it might have been just as good? Avanti were awarded a contract to supply houses in the remoter parts of the highlands with broadband via satellite by the Scottish Government. We get free installation, they get the customers. But it’s turning out to be more of a winner for Avanti than for the customers I think!

We put ourselves on the waiting list for installation as soon as we were committed to buying our new house, back in early March. We figured we’d have the connection up and running in plenty of time for moving in at the end of March. But March, then April, then the first half of May went by before Avanti ‘were in our area’.

When the man came to bolt our satellite dish to the house in mid May, he announced it still wouldn’t be connected until the start of June because Avanti were upgrading their own equipment.

What a mission. I’m told from various sources that we don’t have much choice to find another provider that can get us a more reliable broadband connection, at any price, never mind Avanti’s £60 a month. But if anyone knows of something better we can do, we’d love to hear your beta!

Thankfully we can just about get by with a slow and shaky connection to run our respective web businesses. But I sure wouldn’t like to try setting up a business in the highlands that needs anything like a fast connection by city standards.

Anyhow, for now we are just going to enjoy being connected at all.

[UPDATE] After returning from a film festival in France and turning on the computer again. Our connection is seeming rather more healthy, thankfully. Still slower than our old connection via telephone line in the city lights of Fort William, but enough to update some software and post pictures to my blog. Wahay!

We have moved

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:56:00 +0000

We have moved. We now live here:

Ardlarach

Letterfinlay

PH34 4DZ

Claire and I have both been working like hell since last autumn to save up for a house move. We managed it. We are fatigued, but very pleased.

I like the fact that things have a tendency to work out when you really put your back in. And with a bit of cunning, stuff that would otherwise be a pain can coincide nicely at the right time, so as not to be a pain. At certain times of the year, working very long hours can be a right drag, less so when you have a good goal like a nice place to live. But still.

Rehab from a nasty elbow injury can also be a right drag, requiring everything in your training to be structured, measurable and at times, laborious. But laborious and structured training fits well with laborious and structured work. And both of these fit well into the highland winter. Good timing all round.

So winter has passed, new house got and sore elbow complaining less often, if not completely there yet. As is often the way with rehab done right, I have got significantly stronger in the process and climbing better than before the injury, despite still being in the mid stages of the rehab after 4 months. I’m not yet able to operate at full volume so I can’t get really fit, but small holds are certainly feeling bigger than they were.

All this indoor training locked away in Lochaber’s bouldering rooms has swung my current motivation very much in the direction of looking for an adventure. So although I write from the limestone of Catalunya on a short sport climbing trip, my plans for the coming months are very much centred around trad, in places I’ve never been to. Lets see where all this takes me...?

NB: I wrote the above a few weeks ago. Since then I have been.....

Building for later

Between mad bouts of travelling about doing lectures and coaching, we have been getting used to our new house. Some serious DIY jobs have been keeping me busy into the wee small hours each night. Happily, one of these is to build a home training facility. It’s the first time I’ve had the room for anything more than a fingerboard, so I’m pretty excited about that. Actually thats a bit of an understatement really...

The quiet here is really nice, exactly what I need between the bustle of travelling for work.

Update: Learning more about making some fairly significant alterations to our new house has been an uphill struggle for me. Like most things, I’m pretty useless at it, so waste impressive amounts of time on faffing and correcting earlier blunders. Nevertheless, one loft conversion and a half-built climbing wall later, I have learned some things. The hard way as ever.

Claire and I had a good time travelling to Stockholm and Birmingham with Claire for lectures and coaching. I learned once again from the strong people I’ve coached lately how much you need all the ingredients to crack hard climbing. I met many more climbers much stronger than I’ve got after a few years of trying, but without the same climbing level. The difference? Sometimes it’s naturally light and strong bodies, sometimes it’s teenage life locked in indoor boulder walls, sometimes both. Even the young are stuck in their ways, and can’t get out of the groove of thinking of climbing limitations in terms of strength. For me, it’s the opposite problem. Many years learning to be a wily cunning crag tactician, but sadly lacking in finger strength to get to V15 level.

But in possibly one week I will have a killer 45 board, right there, in my house. No excuses, nothing in the way, no distractions, just getting down to business. Crags, be afraid...

(can you tell I’ve been a little starved of climbing during my moving/self-build stint)

Chain clip number one

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:51:00 +0000

Yesterday we waited until tea time for Siurana to dry out after a rain storm. The route I wanted to be on was still a waterfall, so we ended up on a nice 8b+ that happened to be dry (La llarga Traversia del Capita Enciam). After a couple of goes I grunted through this to a nice stroll to the chain in the sunset.

No matter how many routes you have under your belt, it’s always lifts you a bit to have a feeling of completion of something. On the other routes I want to try, there will be no chain clipping. Not on this trip anyway. The goal is just to get better on the route and get better at hard climbing, so my focus will just be on getting one bolt higher than last time. There are a lot of bolts above my highpoint.

NB: I wrote this post on April 8th. After that, it poured with rain in Catalunya, I changed my flight and went home and renovated my loft instead!

Busy times again

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:20:00 +0000

Climbing Batuka Extention 8b+, Freyr, Belgium. Photos: Jonas Haspeslagh

When I’m working these days it involves a lot of travelling. I’ve never been good with feeling at home wherever I am in the world. I tend to feel at home only at home. I guess thats my personality, but it’s annoying sometimes because my trips are always really interesting for seeing places and meeting people.

Last week among other places I’ve been in Slovenia and Belgium doing lectures to climbers. One of our goals with making Echo Wall together was for Claire and I to be able to travel to some of these nice events like Silvo’s festival together, instead of me disappearing on a bit of a lonely travel for work. We enjoyed seeing Llubljana and it’s people. Echo Wall won a prize at the festival too. It’s only the third year Silvo has run the mountain film festival there and it’s already a pretty big festival.

After a blur of Ryanair flights, working hard on my laptop and a squeezed visit to Dumbarton Rock I found myself in Belgium, climbing at Freyr the day after my talk. It was the first time I’d been out climbing in warm sunshine for several months, and it was making me impressively lethargic. In fact I reckon could have slept for the entire day. The Scots are so useless when we see a glimpse of decent weather.

But it was a valuable chance to get some routes in, so I blasted off up a long 8b+, without really remembering the moves from my warmup bolt-to-bolt. I flailed impressively at the end, but bicycled my feet on the polished footholds through to the summit moments before forearm meltdown. All I could manage after that was a sleepy flash of the 8a next door. Although my head was still asleep, I did notice that I wasn’t really that pumped. Strange because I haven’t had time for endurance training with all this work. The reason, I found on returning home was that I’ve got back down to my fighting weight for the first time since I did Echo Wall. Feeling light on the rock is something I love but don’t get the chance often.

The grabbed climbing sessions in between work and travel have been really worth it, it seems. A friend showed me a prospective eliminate on Totality at Dumbarton. I made the mistake of trying it after I’d just spent a couple of hours pounding my forearms on my endurance circuit and failed from the crux several times. So it was nice to go back on the way home from Belgium and nail it quickly between showers. Before I left I also managed a quick hour in the glen and finally destroyed the roof project on Heather Hat I was talking about before. It goes at about V12 for me, but possibly a tad easier for giants. I’m not sure. I’ll try and get some video of it if the rain stops.

Tomorrow, I am getting a new house which is very exciting. Comparatively little climbing has been done in order to make this happen, but naturally now I’m just starting to think of the coming months and churning around plans in my head.

Thankyou for all your comments about Claire’s recent BAFTA award. There’s an video interview from Scottish TV about it here

Claire enjoying a ‘Coke Float’ a little too much on the way home from lecturing in Leeds.

Claire wins Best Director at BAFTA Scotland

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Last night we were in Glasgow for the BAFTA Scotland new talent awards ceremony. Claire was nominated a few weeks ago for Best Director with Echo Wall. Claire was chuffed to bits to get the nomination and both of us were really happy to see a film from the small world of climbing making it into the glam limelight of the mainstream film and television industry.

But we both convinced ourselves totally that this would be as far as it went, and that the other three nominees for Best Director, with an obviously closer involvement in the film industry would have a better chance.

I sat with Claire while she was briefed along with the other nominees (including the likes of Limmy) about which red carpet to walk down if their name was called out to come and receive an award. I thought it was nice to be invited to spend an evening in such company and see one of these ceremonies ‘in the flesh’. Loud music was played, presenters cracked jokes and announced winners. There was punching the air, shaky hands and tears from winners, and whoops and rapturous applause from a packed grand hall.

Claire’s Echo Wall was up against the directors of the thriller The Dead Outside, urban drama Running in Traffic and the documentary Ballads of the Book featuring contributions from Ian Rankin. We watched the nominees clips play including Echo Wall and then the presenter opened an envelope and announced the winner was Claire MacLeod.

Claire’s face was indeed a picture.

Neither of us can still believe that Claire won this award. The feedback we had from BAFTA’s jurors was that apart from the practical challenge of shooting a film like this single handedly and the seriousness of what Claire filmed (her other half risking neck), they liked the personal nature of the film and the appreciation shown of the beauty of the Lochaber in the shooting.

The impact of it in the ‘outside world’ of film was summed up by one of the other nominees. He asked Claire about the clip that played from Echo Wall of me saying:

“If I make a mistake on the climb, the consequences could not be higher for me, or for Claire.”

He asked if I was meaning we’d have to re-shoot the whole climb if I failed.

Claire explained, “No, he was meaning he would hit the ground and die with his wife filming if he made a mistake.”

This week, Echo Wall also won the Best Scottish Film award at the Fort William Mountain Festival, and Best Film at Glasgow Mountain Film Festival.

A little lost

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:13:00 +0000

This winter has been strange for me. I did my hardest onsight of a mixed route back in December, so my level has increased a little. But in trying many of the lines I’ve thought of in the past, I have had the feeling that in the right conditions, with the right partner, I’d have a good chance. Sometimes that feeling is nice. But sometimes I’m looking for a bit more. The bit more is a true uncertainty about whether the climbing is actually possible for me.

The solution to this is really brain dead simple - try harder climbs. Dumb ass. I’ve had a idea for such a climb for some time now, and been turning over in my mind about how, when and with whom to try it. The ‘with whom’ is actually one of the big problems here. Everyone I’ve asked so far if they fancy a look at it seemed a bit unsure. It’s hard to take a serious gamble on precious good winter days. One man who’s keenness seems to vary in line with how hairbrained the idea is Kev.

So off we went on a perfect day on Tuesday for a look. The conclusion was as expected. Over an hour trying to get past the first 5 moves, followed by failure of arms at the crux and lowering down with my upper body turned to jelly.

But this was the most exciting and inspiring day out mixed climbing I’ve had for years, or maybe ever. The thought that one day, after more training and maybe more tries, this line could be a winter route gives me the same feeling Echo Wall did.

I have a project again!!

One step forward, one back...

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Working on the remaining Heather Hat project last winter. Yesterday I finally managed to stick the second sloper and take the cut loose. If I can just repeat that on a dry day I can try and link it through the finishing lunge.

Today I had a nice walk in the rain on Ben Nevis with Malcolm who'd flown over specially at the hint of good conditions coming on the Ben. Sadly it was the thaw day in the current good freeze thaw cycles going on up there. Observatory Gully looked like a dangerous place to stand today with huge amounts of snow turning wet in the sleet and then rain and just waiting to 'go'. We picked our way across the sidewalls to stay out of the firing line, but it was too unfrozen to justify starting up a new route. The thorough soaking did wonders for my head cold though!

Maybe I'll see some of you tomorrow for my lectures at the Transition Centre in Aberdeen.

Knuckle Down

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:08:00 +0000

That has been the mantra of the month. The amazing freeze of the highlands last month has been replaced by a bit of a miserable thaw and damp weather. These things work out in good timing sometimes.

It’s less than a month until I move house and working super hard and saving every penny has been the main thing to worry about. It’s worth worrying about too since a couple of unexpected setbacks have meant I’ve needed to drop some other plans and work even more than I expected. The recession bites! Must bite back...

The prize though will be worth it. A good place to live for Claire and I, and my own personal domestic dream of having space for a training board in my house for the first time. Good motivation to work hard.

The great thing about working is that there is also plenty of time for uninterrupted spells of training after work. The ratio of elbow rehab:training time is lurching gradually in favour of training, and as is normal for coming out of an injury I feel pretty good and strong.

Between showers (week long ones) I caught the Glen’s boulders dry and returned to the roof sloper project on the Heather Hat. I finally managed to stick the second sloper after a million tries last winter. A good feeling to have made irrefutable strength gains. This for me is one of the feelings from training – new possibilities, where before it was the same old impossibilities.

So it’s another month of hard work, hard training and putting in the hours for payback later. Such is the way with creating good stuff – the long slog in the middle between starting out and the end is the hard, but crucial bit.

Some stuff happening right now:

I’ve been writing a series of introductory articles for the Mountaineering Council of Scotland’s site and magazine on improving at climbing. They are focused very much on concepts that apply to everyone from beginners at climbing to those who have been climbing for years. The articles are here with more to come in the next few months.

On Tuesday (March 3rd)I am in Leeds giving a lecture on risk, climbing and Echo Wall. I’m giving this lecture again on March 8th in Aberdeen as well as a talk on improving at climbing. Details and tickets for these here.

Claire has just finished editing the showreel for this year’s Fort William Mountain Festival which is a couple of weeks away. It’s got the best bits of many of the films showing this year. I’m lecturing there on Thursday March 12th. Check the showreel:

Claire nominated for a Bafta!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:40:00 +0000

I got home the other day to find Claire on the phone looking very cheery. Turns out it was Bafta Scotland on the phone saying she had been nominated for best director in the Bafta new talent awards for Echo Wall. Both of us were fairly dumfounded by this news to say the least.

It’s brilliant though that the quality and commitment of Claire’s work on Echo Wall has been recognised at such a high level. Claire has been creative all the time I’ve known her. But with Echo Wall she did what most others wouldn’t manage, she took it to another level by shooting footage that was extremely arduous and ultimately frightening to get, not to mention a year of long days and nights of work and all our savings and earnings to turn it into a finished film. I’m really pleased for her.

So next month the kilt will be coming out for the Bafta ceremony in Glasgow!

New Lectures in March

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Claire and I have just organised some extra lecture dates in March, presented by Mountain Equipment:

March 3rd: Leeds, Mountain Intelligence. Safe is Risky lecture 7.30pm. Free beer!

Full details and online tickets at my lectures page or at the Mountain Intelligence store.

March 8th: Aberdeen, Transition Extreme.

5pm – Training for climbing

7pm – Safe is Risky

In ‘Safe is Risky’ I talk about my two year preparation for climbing Echo Wall, centred around how my attitude to risk in climbing and life developed and allowed me to be 100% sure I was ready for the hardest trad route in the UK.

The lecture on training for climbing will be my first of this type. Many years ago when I’d not long started climbing I heard that the famous training guru Marius Morstad was giving a lecture on training for climbing at the Kendal Mountain Festival. I had to go to it! It made me go to the festival for the first time and I loved hearing what Marius had to say about a subject I was massively interested in. So now I’ve been immersed in this subject ever since I’m going to try and do something similar and pass on the most important elements that I’ve seen help climbers continue to break into new grades as the years go on.

There won’t be too much about tweaking the fine details of climbing training (because these only become important for the very few). Instead I’ll be talking a lot about how the attitudes, influences and habits you bring to climbing play out in how you improve at it, in lots of unobvious ways.

My aim with this talk is to pass on a useful insight for any climber, beginner or expert about how there is a linked chain right through from your general approaches to the changes in muscle that make you stronger otherwise. Most climbers don’t ever get good because they start in the wrong places and head in the wrong directions or get stuck in cul-de-sacs. I’m hoping to make the subject a bit easier to navigate.

There will be some time at the end to ask specific questions you have and I’ll be around all evening if you want to ask things. Tickets for both the training and Safe is Risky lecture are £8 or £12 for both. You can buy your ticket online from my lectures page here or from Transition Extreme.

But before all that a wee reminder I’m in The Cragg climbing wall next Sunday Feb 22nd doing technique masterclasses during the day and Safe is Risky lecture in the evening. Full details at the lectures page.

Catch you there.

North West adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:16:00 +0000

Ben Nevis looking chilly. I should have been bouldering instead of taking pictures, but it was baltic!

I have been in the north west with Blair. I was keen on a look at the uber hard lines on Ben Bhan. In a scene rather typical of our most frustrating climbing discipline, we waded through the deep snow in the dark to arrive at the giants wall to find all the snow had been neatly blown off the wall by the northerlies. Damn it! That it would be too cold, too warm, too wet, too dry, too windy, not the right kind of wind, not the right kind of snow or other such reasons is nothing new to anyone who tries to do hard Scottish winter climbing. The harder grade you want to climb, the harder it is to catch the climb in good condition.

Sunrise on Ben Bhan

Blair eyes up Giants Wall, Coire am Fhamair

We went for a nice jaunt on an easy route instead (the Fowler classic Great Overhanging Gully VI,7). The aerobics of swinging tools and pulling in ropes all day was good therapy for my creaky elbow, compared to pulling on a Font 8c project in minus 4 conditions the day before. The scenery of the highands has been quite amazing of late though, especially at night with clear skies, full moon illuminating the snow buried mountains in strange light and all the lochs frozen over with temperatures down to minus 18.

Blair ventures up Great Overhanging Gully, VI

Sunrise on the Skye Cuillin

A nice looking piece of ice in the distance - lets check that out!

Next day we headed for Sgurr a Chaorachain, hoping to find some ice. And some ice we found. A lovely hanging fang, unclimbed. I grunted my way up overhanging rock towards this and found a nice body wedge behind the fang for some claustrophobic respite. I forgot my ice screws so a sling around the middle of the fang was the only protection to pull round onto the front face of the fang. Leaning back and eying this up from a seemingly secure placement in the ice, I was relaxed and looking forward to blasting up the ice above. All of a sudden the chunk of ice around my axe decided to part company with the rest of the icicle and I went flying. It was all over before I could blink but my sling held and I suffered only a bash on the arm from the bottom few feet of the fang which broke and hit me as I swung in.

Next time there were no such antics and I blasted up the headwall of ice to bag a nice new grade VII. Every time I go to the north west I see so much more to do. It’s quite amazing how few routes have been done on the cliffs there. The question is, will I be good enough to climb them?

Jerry's Revelations

noreply@blogger.com (Dave MacLeod) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:13:00 +0000

One of the nice things about running my webshop is that I can choose exactly what I think are really cool films or books that are worth reading or seeing for climbers. Something I got pretty excited about was Jerry Moffatt’s biography which is just out. Of course I read everything Jerry wrote in the climbing magazines and watched all his films when I started climbing. It was pretty obvious to me then, even as a youngster that Jerry was who he was because he had something a bit different, a bit more. It was the single minded determination that helped him overtake everybody else, and then stay at such a high level through the injuries and upsets that would knock most other athletes down a few pegs.

Reading stories like Jerry’s are always inspiring because it reaffirms what can be done with the right attitude, and just how critical attitude is. I just got my stock through yesterday, so I haven’t read it yet. When I do I’ll get a review up. In the meantime, if you are as keen to read this as I am, you can get it in the shop here.