New North Wales Bouldering guidebook launch!

On Saturday I attended a meetup and party to celebrate the long awaited and much anticipated launch of the new 2017 North Wales Bouldering Guidebook!
Now available from V12 Outdoor.

North Wales has some of the best bouldering in the world. In 2004 Simon Panton published the first proper bouldering guidebook to the area:



I can remember my excitement 12 years ago (in 2006) getting hold of a copy. I grew up in North Wales and was just starting to lead climb outside. The guide opened my mind to the possibility of bouldering - another style of climbing I could try. Over the proceeding years I've visited almost all areas in the old book and enjoyed climbing many fine problems and visiting some special hidden areas of forrest and mountainside I would not have otherwise explored.

Diamond Days

Here in North Wales the outdoor roped climbing season is pretty much over. Cold, wetness and darkness are prevailing. Ah well, a change of scene is always good. I'm enjoying the Beacon Climbing indoor winter bouldering circuits and looking forward to getting outside bouldering.

I've finally managed to find some time to edit the video footage I shot climbing on The Diamond crag on the Little Orme in Llandudno.

The Diamond is one the best sport climbing crags in the UK. It's a shame due to bird nesting restrictions, tides and conditions it's only really possible to climb on it a few months of the year. These restrictions do make those rare days when all the stars align even more magical. 

Here's a short video edit of Luke Brooks and I climbing on The Diamond towards the end of the summer. 




Luke's project is actually Skip of Fools 8a+ (incorrectly labelled in the video) and my route is The Brute 8b. Both us made good progress but didn't manage to send our projects before winter took hold. I'm actually fine with this, I've been really enjoying the process of red-pointing and it's a good motivation to train over the winter to have an open project! Roll on next summer..

Here's a few photos from The Diamond:




Llanberis 'Driving With Electricity' EV Event: My Experience after 20K EV miles

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at a CPRW Electric Car event at Electric Mountain in Llanberis. My presentation covered my experience driving an EV and the ins and outs of charging.

Here's a copy of my slides:



Here's a copy of the agenda: