3 out of 5 stars
The last time I did any climbing was when I was in the scouts and that was a long time ago. I haven’t done anything like that for years now and whilst I am ok with heights, occasionally they get the better of me. In this memoir, Ann Fleming takes us from the first time she tried the sport to where she is now.
She has climbed all over the UK, from the slate mountains in Wales where there is almost no grip on the smooth stone, to the gritstone of the Peak District where the undulating surfaces are challenging to climb. She takes on some classic climbs in Scotland on Cullin and even ventures to Greece to climb the limestone of Kalymnos. There are brief sojourns back in history as she looks at how this once male activity is becoming far more evenly split now, but there is still some way to go with attitudes from some of the old school.
Generally, I thought that this was a reasonable book. However, there were parts of this book that I liked and other parts that really didn’t work for me. I found the technical parts of the books a touch tedious, I would have liked a little more explanation as to some of the techniques and methods that she uses when climbing as some of the jargon was mystifying. What I did like was her descriptions of the mountain landscapes across the UK the euphoria and emotions that she had on completing a particularly challenging climb
Hm, that’s a pity there wasn’t more explanation of terms! I am terribly feeble and would never do climbing but know a fair bit about it from my reading. I have enjoyed working on Nimsdai Purja’s books (if you haven’t seen the 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible documentary on Netflix do try to, it’s amazing) and had to know a lot of terms for that! But it’s not fair to keep that info for the experts and not explain it.
I get that you might not need to explain terms in a book that is aimed at a specific audience, but this is for the more general reader and it is missing a bit of a trick