UKC

Here is the latest article by Geoff Birtles. "Personal recollections of the Cioch Club and rock-climbing at Stoney Middleton in the 1960s"
http://smhccg.org/rock-climbing/j-cioch-climbing-club/

In reply to Loris Doyle:

Thank you so much for putting this on here. I can't believe it's been on the internet for the last few months, quietly unnoticed - and a day on here, without people taking heed of it. It's golden! Anybody who gives a fig about the history of British climbing would do well to read it. There's something elegiac about these guys, 50 years ago now, giving it their all at Stoney yet not dreaming that an explosion in standards was just around the corner. No idea that, only a few years later, Stoney would take over from Llanberis as the epicenter of it all.

And, of course, it's hilarious to think of impressionable youth discovering the delights of such venues as Strawberry Rocks. Ah, the glories of hindsight!

Thanks again.

Mick

In reply to Loris Doyle:

"I am told that it was Dave Nowill’s idea to call the new group the Cioch Climbing Club after the Cioch Block on the Isle of Skye which resembled a breast, cioch being the gaelic word for mammary."

I did not know this...

Thanks for posting.

In reply to Mick Ward:

Hi Mick,

I saved the Stoney Middleton web site, after seeing Al Evans post about Part one in January 2015.
Revisited the site every couple of months to check for updates. Great climbing history there & specially looking forward to the tales of the 1970's.
I was also surprised that it hadn't been noticed earlier - perhaps the Henry Ford view of history is a lot more prevalent in the climbing community than I thought!

Regards

Loris

In reply to Loris Doyle:

Hi

For those who read this when Loris posted originally, Geoff and the Stoney Heritage team have now added photographs to the article. Well worth reading.

Phil

In reply to Loris Doyle:

Makes me feel as young as I looked in the photos!

In reply to Grumpy Old Man:

Well, I guess that kind of answers the question I had, along the line of 'where are all these people now?'. Posting on UKC, presumably.

Thanks to the OP for the link; really nice read.

jcm