UKC

Hi All, I am thinking of going to Go-Outdoors in Coventry to try a pair of mountaineering boots for my daughter (size 5, if anyone has any for sale! Suitable for easy Alps/Scottish Grade III).

Anyway, if we trek down from Warrington to Coventry, can anyone recommend any crags nearby with a selection of routes up to VS?

Thanks in advance.

Ian

In reply to BigHairyIan:

Not much around sadly.
Your best bet would be to get back in the car and head up the Peak District.

In reply to MikeSP:
There is a French term "Coventrisee", which means "to completely flatten", which was invented during the Blitz in World War Two. Although it alludes to the rather thorough work done by the Luftwaffe, it might as well have a connection to the surrounding landscape, which is remarkably, starkly, rock-free.

I have done an awful lot of tramping back forth around the fields and forests surrounding Coventry and Warwickshire with an eye and a half open for potential climbing, and although I have found a couple of worthwhile little outcrops that could do with a brush and a bouldering mat, some of them require a canoe approach and others would need either a golf club membership or cover of darkness. There is very little indeed higher than three or four metres. I fully intend to develop them into usable spots in the future, and I'll be adding them to the UKC database if and when appropriate, but seeing as I only spend a couple of weeks a year in the ancestral abode here in Warwickshire, it might be quite a while before they are ready.

If you trawl the database on here for crags near to Coventry, though, there are actually a few stone railway bridges and an old quarry listed, but I've never visited any of them myself, so I can't comment on their worth. I'd be massively keen to hear a report from them though!

Good luck!

In reply to BigHairyIan:

No.

I don't count Kenilworth Castle walls.

In reply to earlsdonwhu:

Climbing the beautiful soft red sandstone walls of the incredible Kenilworth Castle is an offence that should see people locked up for life!

Fun facts (or at least believable fictions):

Kenilworth Castle is where Henry Five was when he received a gift of tennis balls from the Dauphine in France, sparking a quite violent series of tete-a-tetes across northern France which culminated in the tremendous victory at Agincourt (or Azincourt, as the place should be known).

Kenilworth Castle is where Queen Lizzie was sitting when she tasted her first potato, a present from that Walter Raleigh chap on his trip back from the New World. She munched into it like an apple, so the legend goes, and was so displeased by it that she lobbed it out of the open window and onto Castle Green, where apparently it grew into the first potato plant in England.

In reply to earlsdonwhu:



You're surely forgetting the sandstone redoubt of Corley Rocks. Where I not only did my first climbing but my first free classic abseil!

In reply to Dave Garnett:

When I moved to the area 25 years ago, I had heard of Corley Rocks and went to visit. I found a condom infested wasteland with some grot rock.................. I have never been near since!

In reply to earlsdonwhu:

I called in to see what it looked like a few months back,didn't even get my rock shoes out! But it had DIY bolts on it!looked like some had pulled out and if not they would anyway.very dangerous if you ask me!

In reply to BigHairyIan:

I did some really crap routes in an old quarry somewhere near Hinckley once.

It might have been this one:

Granitethorpe Quarry

In reply to BigHairyIan:



The best way I can think to make this a credible climbing trip is to head back up the M69/M1 to Chesterfield then take in some classic peak grit, or one of the trad limestone crags like Widcat.

In reply to BigHairyIan:

Staffordshire grit?

In reply to BigHairyIan:

It's not far to that esoteric gem, Pontesford Rocks. Not that near, either, but you'll probably never be in a position to visit it again. The lower grade routes there aren't bad at all.

Pontesford Rocks