Peak Performance

A Couple of hours with Ron Fawcett

2012-02-05T23:34:00.001-08:00

As the pace gathers for the Peak Performance project, we’re getting to speak to a lot more people and get their thoughts on a variety of subjects.

Now, Ron Fawcett was interviewed by Giles Barker back in the 1980s, but the tape that was made is believed to be inaudible, so we decided that we’d need to do this one all over again.

Graham and I met up with Ron at his house just a few days ago and got the chance to ask him some of the questions that we wanted answers to. He even signed my Lancashire ‘brick’ (I forgot to say that Arthur Birtwistle signed my copy of High Peak last weekend).

Sunday Afternoon with a Legend

2012-01-29T14:11:00.001-08:00

It was always going to be a fascinating day.

Arthur Birtwistle had been rather an enigma to me for many years. One can read about him in various guidebooks and he even has a section describing his Cloggy exploits in The Black Cliff, but today I was hoping to learn a bit more about Arthur’s Peak District climbing, and a little about his early days.

For obvious reasons we won’t go into any Peak District stuff here, but let me tell you a bit more about Arthur’s early life, and how he started – and progressed – in his climbing.

In 1918, Arthur Birtwistle was born in a house on Walshaw Road, Bury, Lancashire. Did you read that correctly? BURY, LANCASHIRE. My home town.

From the age of 3 or 4 his parents would take him rambling over the moors north of Bury, around Holcombe Hill. “You see, every Easter it was traditional to climb Holcombe Hill on Good Friday”.

That’s right, and “they still do it to this day Arthur. Every Good Friday the car park outside the Hare and Hounds is awash with people who’ve come from far and wide. It’s a bit like Pendle at Halloween, only louder”.

“Well, we used to walk up there… the easiest route… and you could see the quarry on the left. Postman’s Head”

I showed him a picture of what I’d always called the Andy Capp wall at Harcles Hill Quarry. “Is that the Postman’s Head?” I asked, outlining the shape of the face to him.

“Oh, yes. I remember that wall. I don’t think we ever realised why it was called Postman’s Head though; it was the ramblers that called it that I think. Seems obvious now you point it out though.”

[the Postman’s Head is clearly visible in the photo to the left]

Now what readers should remember here is that the earliest recorded routes at Harcles Hill were climbed in the 1970s by (I think) Phil Warner and Dave Cronshaw. Note that I say ‘recorded’ because as usual with these quarries, it’s never certain that you were indeed the first, but here we have Arthur Birtwistle, of Diagonal and Drainpipe Crack fame, putting himself at the tender age of 14, climbing at Harcles Hill quarry on his mother’s washing line!

“I never top-roped anything, no matter where I climbed” he says. “I did some stuff on that steep slab on the left, and round there. And I think I did one up the main wall”.

Chatting to him further I get the feeling that Arthur would cycle up here quite regularly, possibly with his friends (Gordon Parkinson perhaps) and they would literally climb a few things and go home, but would never record things. It seems quite likely though that about 6 routes from the current Lancashire guide would have been climbed by Arthur at this time, during the fairly frequent calls he made to the quarry.

Before moving along to Yorkshire, Wales and then the Peak District, I asked him more about climbing in that area; around Bury, Rochdale and possibly Bolton.

Now, at the age of 93, we’re talking about the events of 75+ years ago, and memories obviously get a little sketchy, but Arthur quite clearly explained to me how to get to Cow’s Mouth Quarry. I was actually asking him about Blackstone Edge at the time (yes he climbed there too), but he asked if I knew about the place and explained the route to get there – in exactly the same way one would take to this day.

Again non-committal, Arthur had climbed at Cow’s Mouth but again hadn’t recorded anything, and why should he? It seems that they regarded quarry climbing as a step on a ladder, probably the lowest step, and merely a training aid and a way of keeping fit – even in those early days Arthur knew what he wanted and it was bigger than the small dingy quarries in that area.

The only other place I could pin him down to specifically was Cadshaw Rocks (and maybe one route in the quarry, he said he might have climbed there too).

Now, whilst at Manchester University, which he went to aged 18 in 1936, he grew friendly with Allan Allsop, a man who was later to have a dedication in the 1982 Lancashire guidebook as the Father of Lancashire Climbing.

Allan was a lecturer at university and Arthur a student. They both enjoyed climbing and one day Allan said he’d found a new place and had done a couple of new routes. The two met up the following weekend actually at the crag – the crag we now know as Cadshaw Rocks. “You didn’t bother recording stuff. We’d just solo up and down all day. One of us would do something and the other would follow up afterwards, always solo. Then we’d do something else. We just went up and down things. And we wrote a guide to it as well.” I got the feeling that by the time their developments at Cadshaw were concluded, honours in the route numbers were probably more or less even.

Allan Allsop and Arthur Birtwistle would climb together quite a bit in the coming years, at Widdop, where they made a number of first ascents and also on Cloggy where Birtwistle’s finest hour was no doubt his lead (in socks) of Drainpipe Crack, a feat performed totally on sight.

On this occasion, Allsop actually failed to follow the pitch and climbed the lower section of Curving Crack instead.

I told Arthur about the dedication in the 1982 guidebook and he smiled and said that was really nice and probably well deserved.

So there you have it; the early days of Arthur Birtwistle. Clearly the young Birtwistle was quite active on a limited number of crags in Lancashire from around 1932 onwards and no doubt made many first ascents that we’ll never be able to track down, similar in many ways to the explorations of the great H.M. Kelly at Stanage in the early part of the 20th century.

Phil

Three Missing Chapters

2011-12-01T23:54:00.001-08:00

One area that is going to be interesting for the project is between 1930 and 1948, the years when Dover, Ellis and Elliot were at their peak through to Peter Harding and his ground-breaking routes such as Demon Rib, Promontary Traverse and the rest.

Sadly these chapters don’t seem to have survived and we just can’t track them down.

The search will continue of course, but we’re planning to fill this period with new material that we write ourselves. There are a whole host of resources that we’ve tracked down that will help with this, but as always the search goes on and we still hope to locate Giles’ original text for these chapters.

Phil

Priming the Pump: Mark Leach

2011-11-16T14:23:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago, Graham and I met up with Mark Leach to continue the excellent work Giles did before us, to interview Mark for research into the book.

We spent a good couple of hours in Mark’s company talking about everything from early days in Lancashire through to his more well-known first ascents of routes in the Peak District such as The Screaming Dream, plus repeats of cutting edge routes such as The Master’s Edge, Revelations, Beau Geste, and a whole lot more.

Mark’s insights into his approach to climbing in the 1980s made fascinating listening; the training regime that he imposed on himself, his climbing goals, success and sometimes failures.

The list of successes is considerable, but because he was never a prolific new router, Mark never really became a household name, but when you read through his lists of routes done you just can’t help but be super impressed.

Amongst the successes are the first ascents of routes such as Cry Freedom at Malham and The Screaming Dream at Froggatt, and it’s these two routes which probably define Mark’s new routing career more than any others. Who can forget the stories of his 46-day first ascent of Cry Freedom, for which he became almost notorious for spending so long attempting the route by people who didn’t understand Mark’s drive honesty. The Screaming Dream was another long project and it’s only when you sit down with him and talk about it that the reasons become clear.

Besides these two routes though the story of Mark’s (probable first) ascent of the direct to Thirty Seconds over Winterland at Widdop and the true story of Mark’s ‘failed’ attempt on Triffid Wall in Wilton One (now called Gigantic after being free climbed by Dave Pegg an number of years later) also got recorded as well as a whole host of background information about Peak District activities in the 80s and early 90s.

So, that’s Mark Leach interviewed, and what a joy it was too. We’re arranging some others at the moment and we’ll hopefully be able to add a few snippets from each to the blog as we go along.

More soon!

Phil

First Blog Post: Welcome to the Peak Performance Blog!

2011-11-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

Hi there and welcome to the Peak Performance blog.

We’ve created this blog so that people can keep updated on the project to complete the manuscript that was sadly left behind by the late Giles Barker, and to bring the manuscript by adding a further 20+ years to the existing material.

Giles’ intention was to take his readers on a trip through Peak District climbing history but focussing in on the Peak Performers; the activists who were at the forefront of developments in their day. Giles undertook many, many hours of interviews and research to gather his material together and it is with his original plan in mind that we will, over the next 2 years, follow closely in his footsteps to produce an accurate historical record, often led by first hand accounts from activists themselves.

Over the coming weeks and months we will be updating this blog as regularly as possible so that people will be able to keep tabs on progress, read what is going on, and even make comments back to the Peak Performance team.

That’s all for now. Hopefully more soon!

Phil