Jenny Walters, Features Editor

Miles walked this month: 116

One kind of moving about the landscape we didn’t get to in this issue is climbing. Now, I was daunted by high kerbs as a kid and my attitude to heights has evolved little since, so this is no tale of a daring ascent of Echo Wall. Instead, it’s about a book I discovered called the Presumptuous Pinnacle Ladies and the women-only climbing club which held its inaugural meeting at Pen-y-pass in Snowdonia 100 years ago. It features articles from early club journals that mix humorous candour – ‘By the time we were on Esk Hause in the gathering dusk we would have passed for the three witches of Macbeth. All had long hair, now down and dripping’ – and pure invitation: ‘Have you ever had a runaway weekend, when you would have ignored everything but the call of the hills, and gone where the spirit moved you?’ During lockdown, far from the mountains, their words have been a balm to me.