UKC

It looks like someone has been a bit cheeky with their signage (and the blocking of parking areas?) around here.

https://path-watch.com/2020/10/05/plot-thickens-on-west-nab/

In reply to Andy Say:

It's getting f*cking stupid round there and Chew Valley now with this bollocks. Is there no law regarding spurious signage, I suppose it is private land. Someone should probably just vandalise it, seems like direct action is the only way with this shower of cnuts.

In reply to Removed User:

Most of the signs in the Chew are the work of Crowther at Upperwood. His dad was always a reasonable, decent guy and I was once invited in for tea and biscuits. His son seems a rather different character. Many of the signs he has put up are rubbish and he knows it - the land is nearly all CRoW land. 

This was also the estate where a red kite was shot out of the sky a year or two back and there's no doubt in my mind who was responsible for that. 

I appreciate that he has had problems with people setting fires and trashing things during recent times and I have sympathy with that. However climbers could be very useful to him as all we want to do is climb, and we don't like seeing things trashed and burnt. These signs need to be ignored, simple as that.

If anyone is challenged by him or his keepers whilst on CRoW land, invite him to check an OS map and even suggest that he call the police if he thinks there is aggravated trespass going on. 

In reply to Removed User:

I doubt that anyone  spending hours of their time in access negotiations will think too highly of the promotion of vandalism as a bargaining tool.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

What access negotiations? It's all on CRoW land (bar possibly a couple of the Pits quarries).

Bit of spray paint over the signs would make the point easily enough.

In reply to Removed User:

As I've said before, CROW only provides you with access. AS far as I know it doesn't protect the nature of the climbing on what is still someone else's property. 

So if young Mr Crowther gets a bit sick of people shoving CROW legislation in his face, what's to stop him from turning really bloody minded and testing just what he can get away with on his own property.

I can remember a couple of years ago when there was a lot of UKC hand wringing about a landowner chipping a few bits off a Yorkshire bouldering venue. And the Yellowslacks incident was before my time but I was always aware of it. Whatever yor moral stance is and whatever rights you think CROW gives the climbing community, suggesting vandalism as a way forward is very imprudent, to say the least.

( The notion that his dad was a reasonable guy is debatable; if Frank the Husky's four legged alter ego had been spotted within a hundred yards of a sheep in the sixties he'd have got both barrels. The man was notorious for it. I don't recall him ever being prosecuted in spite of a substantial local press campaign because he was acting within the law.) ( Or maybe it was the grandad. Either way, there seems to be a pattern)

In reply to Andy Say:

We tried to go climbing at Shooters Nab last week and had a run in with the rifle range...:

 We turned up at the crag (approaching from Marsden) and could see the red flags and the club was shooting but followed all the rules exactly. As we were gearing up to the right of the rostrum to climb Sweatyman, a drone with a speaker turned up and said we were breaking the access agreement which it claimed was only after 6pm on Fridays and told us to leave.

I stood my ground and pointed to the relevant guidebook page and indicated with my hands that we weren’t going to the left of the rostrum (it's a fairly one way conversation with a drone). The drone then flew away and said the police were coming.

We waited at the base of the crag and the police turned up swiftly as they were running a shooting course at the range. We had a perfectly reasonable discussion with the policeman and made it clear we were going to leave but we explained that we were climbing within the access agreement (I checked later that there were no closures to the CRoW land on the Natural England website). We overheard the range warden on the radio saying the access agreement was only after 6pm on Fridays so the policeman photographed the relevant guidebook page to show the warden.

As we were leaving we overheard another radio conversation where the warden told the police it was ok if you stayed to the right of a marker on the crag... (ie rostrum rightwards) and we were within the access agreement...

I emailed the BMC to let them know and we went off to climb at Pule Hill in the sun.

In reply to sgl:

A drone with a speaker - most excellent! 

A few years ago we spray painted a yellow marker onto the crag, was that the marker you're referring to? The shooting club can be a little loose in their interpretation of rules that are impossible to misinterpret!

In reply to Tom Valentine:

Litter picking. 

In reply to Andy Say:

It's been a issue for many years, not helped when the Countryside agency as was, acquiesced to a 'safety' zone covering a vast area behind the range just in case high velocity bullets want over the buds on the range.  The police testified they needed the facility for very occasional training  but it begged the question why weren't the club's on_site safety measure sufficient.

In reply to Tom Valentine:

To be accurate, Whitehouses is not on access land, but is directly next to a footpath. It’s a small venue and the chipping was well targeted to ruin the majority of the climbs. A lot of the ‘hand wringing’ at the time was due to the BMC’s inaction in the face of repeated warnings of a growing issue, area meetings at the time were over run with some organisational reshuffling and there wasn’t much time for access discussions. 

In reply to Andy Say: thanks for posting this. I have spent years round there. I have a regular7 mile run which skirts under the crag. The foot path link was especially interesting.   Thank you..

In reply to Frank the Husky:

Lucky it wasn't a drone with a shotgun!

In reply to Arms Cliff:

My point was that CROW only provides access and that the crags on access land are still the property of the landowner to treat as he wishes.

In reply to sgl:

Proper George Orwell territory that!

In reply to Tom Valentine:

"a lot of UKC hand wringing about a landowner chipping a few bits off a Yorkshire bouldering venue".

Could be worse. Some years back the farmer above Greenland Quarry released a few tons of pig slurry down the crag to deter people....

In reply to Andy Say:

Pig slurry washes off, chipped holds don’t  grow back. 

In reply to Arms Cliff:

A chipped hold never got you a bollocking from your mum though!