Punk in the Gym

If Jerry Moffat’s Revelations stands as a lucid account of British climbing i n the 1980s, Andy Pollitt’s confronts the reader with an irreverent parallel narrative of a player that took things well past the point of no return – several times – and somehow managed to write about it. Here we have the murky genre of headpointing setting up the far bolder on-sighting style played out on sea-cliff climbs in North Wales. No place for anyone that might not see opposed RPs and sea-salted tats as protection, where the discovery of a hitherto unseen matchbox-sized edge might make the difference between life and death. If there ever was a book that led you astray into the grossly inebriated and often obscure world of British rock climbing, this would be it.

British Steel may have been on its knees, but the dole, shoe company sponsorships, and the availability of squats in Sheffield propelled a new generation of climbers who were willing to train to such abusive levels that surgery became a rite of passage. Andy Pollitt describes a manic Gritstone Cauldron where the abyss of post-disco clubbing got channelled into establishing routes whose difficulty summoned, for the first time, the continental elite. This was British Rock Climbing’s Yosemite moment. is told from the vantage point of a life made in Australia following a retirement from climbing having completed the book’s eponymous route. It contains a richness of detail that reminds you how deeply climbing can be burnt into your soul long after you’ve supposedly abandoned it.–