UKC

Planning a week in Font with the family in September. 

It'll be our first trip. Any recommendations for such guidebook up go for?

Two kids aged 10 and under, so something with a good selection of easier problems/circuits would be ideal. 

Thanks. 

This is probably your safest bet for a mix of grades…

https://www.v12outdoor.com/fontainebleau-climbs-english-text.html?gclid=Cjw...

As much as it pains me to say, it's the Jingo Wobbly guide for me:
https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/books/fontainebleau_fun_bloc-2600

I actually like that guide but as I recall it doesn’t actually detail any yellow circuits, focusing instead on Orange and Blue.

Montchausse - inexplicably shit maps and topos. Good mix of everything. Covers most areas you'll be going to, but you'll mostly be lost. Hard to recommend.

Jingo - decent maps and topos, completely indecipherable batshit insane book full of rambling waffle, holiday photos and hieroglyphs but might be the best for what you're asking for. Still hard to recommend.

Van Raaij - the best guides, maps, topos and info but unfortunately only covers grade 5 and up. 

Whichever you buy, you'll also want to know about http://bleau.info and https://fontainebleau.rocks/

The maps in the old purple one were horrendous but new white edition is much improved, albeit still not as clear as Jingo. 

I had the jingo guide and never used it as I thought an online site was far more user friendly with GPS maps and filters for things like quick drying or good landings or suitable for kids. 

https://www.boolder.com/en/fontainebleau

That's pretty awesome! Never seen that before.

yep ‘batshit insane’ just about encapsulates jingo wobbly. The ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ of guidebook series 😂

Give him credit, he did improve after his first effort in which he made up his own circuits from problems in established circuits and didn't make clear anywhere that the circuits in the book weren't meant to represent those on the rock. That was a great prank. At least the newer editions don't seem to do that. And his photos of the lines were super useful for quick location. But now boolder and https://fontainebleau.rocks exist so that's kinda moot. 

'essential Fontainebleau' had the best features of all the books but seems to be out of print now. I'll mostly be staring at my phone and tripping over rocks on future trips.

After multiple visits to 'Bleau, I like many others have a vast selections of guidebooks...

For the easier grades, Jingo Wobbly is pretty good. I won't use it for circuits though.

The Montchausse purple was not good for circuits like someone mentioned... but absolutely something you could live with. The newer white seems to be indeed better.

And as said, I feel like the best print resource is Van Raaij for indevidual problems.

But nowadays, I mostly only look at the guidebooks at home, atleast for indevidual problems. And more often than not, I just use 27crags app whilst actually climbing (the GPS navigation is often top notch, as are the premium topo maps, fees do however apply). I do still bring one of the guidebooks with me though (one Van Raaij or Montchausse, as they show the circuits or at least some of the circuits).

And if I'm just climbing a circuit, Montchausse and/or a printout from bleau.info (or saved on my phone) is more than enough... especially since I still bring my phone, so can again use the 27crags app for GPS navigation to get me back on track.

That's nice!

This walk/scramble is good fun but a bit epic if attempted in one sitting.  It's easy enough to do sections of it, taking the flatter trails back to the car once fatigue sets in.

https://www.visorando.com/en-gb/walk-the-circuit-des-25-bosses-the-25-bumps...

27 crags on your phone. Much better than a physical book IMO.

It's not that simple and "completely indecipherable batshit insane book full of rambling waffle, holiday photos and hieroglyphs" is, using your language, just your occasional failing of a bat shit crazy exaggerated reponse.

Circuit maps on yellows in particular become inaccurate quickly as the local 'guardians' are always assesesing and changing the route and the included problems (sometimes it almost looks deliberate to me... maybe to thwart outside publishers?).

I've never had any problems with using the latest Jingo Wobbly guides, even if from a design perspective they do grate. In particular,  for someone who climbs much harder than yellow he made a decent attempt to regrade from the historical nonsense to something  approaching reality. Function over form always counts most to me in guidebooks. 

A selection is good, i quite like how esoteric the Jingo Wobbly's are (there have been times where the scale on the maps is so out of whack that i've walked in circles around a boulder for about 45minutes). 

it's a shame that the 'unofficial guide' that was compiled by an infamous local climber was never available commercially as it has a really handy description of all the crags at the back along with advise around parking for the more 'off the beaten track' ones.

I visited one of the authors of the purple guide sometime around the mid 2000s with the excuse of buying one of his rather handy small three way folding bouldering mats (great for reducing slip risks of a bigger mat on sloping landings and for covering pointy boulders near landings). His design and database multi-screen computer setup was amazing as were his maps and GPS locations of every known problem. He said, sadly,  no one wanted to publish what he had. 

As we visited Font regularly back them (as well-established, lower-grade-gritstone 'checking machines'), we started regrading problems on yellow and orange circuits as a public service. After just a few years the shifting numbers and inclusions showed our task was going to be pointless, unless we set up a full photo-topo database and regularly tracked circuit changes; so we stopped.

One thing to be aware of is that several major circuits have been renumbered, rendering the printed books even more confusing. You can find every circuit here: http://www.cosiroc.fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=...

Another good resource is https://bleau.info/

For what it's worth I've used the Jingo Wobbly Fun Bloc and Top Secret guides, the old Purple Book and the updated White Book, over enough trips that I've lost count, and I don't think I've ever had a bad day because of a guidebook. Even in cases where the circuit that we were aiming for has been completely repainted, we've normally been able to find the new route with a bit of running around and following the painted arrows...

Hi, I'm the creator of Boolder. Very glad to hear you mention it in this thread

Boolder is a free app (iPhone + Android) with carefully crafted maps and topos for all levels: https://www.boolder.com/en/app

There is also a web version: https://www.boolder.com/en/map https://www.boolder.com/en/fontainebleau

Don't hesitate to reach out if you have suggestions/ideas to improve it!

Thanks for dropping in! Love your work. Honestly, it's been too long waiting for something like this project to happen. 

Only thing I'd add (apart from increasing coverage, which I'm sure will come) is to have grades show on the maps as you zoom in, rather than just coloured dots. That would be a nice touch. But what you've done is awesome. Let us know if/how people can help.

Looks great. I presume you are still adding some areas / circuits?

Amazing work!

I've added an entry in our guides database for you:
https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/books/boolder-2601

This is really wonderful work! What I would suggest is that you publish the year the circuit (or the current version of it) was opened / last painted to make sure you keep track of changes.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll try to find a way to show the grades more clearly.

I'm curious, do you use the grade filters? (iPhone only for now)

Yes, many areas and circuits coming!

What are your most wanted areas?

Awesome, thank you!

That's a very good point, thanks for the suggestion!

Yeah, on the website version I can filter eg grade 7, and that works, but it just shows grey dots and it would be super useful if they were grey circles with a grade. As it is now you have to tap each one in turn to find out what they are.

Edit: it's not easy to do but you can see what I mean if you pick a problem on fontainebleau.rocks then pick map, then filter by a range of grades. Then the grades of the off-circuit problems show on the map in quite a convenient way.

Not much use for us for finding where to go as we have done nearly everything we are likely to want to. Those we help most are lower grade boulderers doing circuits, and on those we might be able to feedback on specifics from this year.