UKC

So once again I got the wear a helmet and have eyes in the back of your head lesson,  this time at Bamford Edge. It's really become a tourist magnet drawing in people with no experience of the outdoors so it came as no surprise that the loose kid at the top of the crag kicked rocks down. Fortunately the larger of them was about half brick sized and bounced off the wall before grazing by my left knee, the next was smaller. Scooted to the top to tell the parents to put a stop to it, got a totally nonchalant look back.

Anyway. Just have eyes all over the place a helmet on. Even at a short crag.

I'm amazed at your restraint .

Small rock-throwing children can be addressed quite safely and from a distance:

To make a blowpipe, start with a long, narrow tube, traditionally made from bamboo or other lightweight, sturdy wood. The tube is carefully hollowed out and smoothed to ensure air flows freely through it.

To craft poison-tipped darts, Amazonian tribes often use the secretions from certain toxic frogs, such as the Phyllobates species. These frogs excrete potent toxins on their skin, which is collected and applied to the tips of small, thin darts made from wood, bone, or other materials. The darts are then fired from the blowpipe, with the poison immobilizing or killing your target, making them effective tools for either leader of belayer under attack.

Unfortunately not very common in Derbyshire. 

Dipped in LSD - that'll keep their parents busy with them

Do you think they would work against drones?

Without condoning the rock throwing, should we rename our national parks "middle class playgrounds".

It's the message I get from a number of threads here. There is a very low tolerance for non climbing users of the Peaks.

A few checkpoints on entry to ensure that only the right sort get in perhaps.

At the risk of revealing my methods, a couple of years ago I managed to get my hands on a fancy catapult/slingshot (Simple Shot Scout LT2) sone spare bands and a range of ammo.

I used to be pretty good with a slingshot as a kid and have been trying to brush up on my skills and often carry it (sans ammo), in my bag (catapults are not on the offensive weapons list and it comes down to the intent of the individual and scenario to determine if the catapult in question is an offensive weapon - although with 'intent' the police can still reach for the Prevention of Crime Act 1953. That said, climbing kit ia a hoard of weapons in the wrong hands!)

Now, if I were at the crag and a drone turned up, someone could quite easily open up my rucksack, grab the slingshot, and using stones from the ground silently bring down the drone...

I'd be very surprised if you couldn't bring down something the size of a Mavic 3. 

Interpreting not wanting to have rocks thrown at you from above whilst climbing as wanting to enclose national parks because you are a soft middle class whinger is probably the best bit of mental gymnastics I will read today, and it is still the morning.

I recently shouted at some kids launching rocks down a scree/wooded hillside with climbing crags below, they probably didn't know there was climbing/people down there. Told them they could kill someone, they stopped.

It's not just in National Parks. I've had kids actively throwing stones from the gravel towpath at me and my group when kayaking on the Thames.

No option to approach them without making yourself an even bigger target, so the only option was to move elsewhere along the river.

Bait catapult and maggots. Plus a fishing handline of course. Part of your standard kit for kayaking whether there are fishing rights or not, so you have a legit pretext. 

I've been magotted while in a kayak, so I would be delighted if the favor could be returned. 

Y

There was a nice implication in there as well, that it couldn't possibly be middle class kids throwing stones, they must have been working class.

These little sh!ts need throwing in.

For other examples, I'd like to believe that 99% of them just don't know people are climbing. Pretty sure we've all thrown rocks as kids. More fun off a high point as you get to see how far you can throw it.

Easy to get really angry in the moment, but what they really need is someone to calmly explain that there's people climbing down there and you might kill them. Most would be horrified at this realisation and would hopefully think twice next time.

Yeah, tempting - but maggots don't fly that far and not the best example to the Cubs/Scouts I was with at the time.

Only person I've ever actively threatened on the water was some prat of a kid hooning around in a small inflatable tender with an outboard in an area where lots of kids were in the water (swiming, jumping in, rubber dinghys, that sort of thing). Told him if he didn't clear off, I'd shred his boat!

I last went to Bamford 18 months or so ago and I won't be hurrying back any time soon due to the hordes of people there seemingly 24/7.

A few pebbles found their way down to us while gearing up for a route. A quiet polite word with the parent of the young child who was playing with the stones and it was sorted. It simply hadn't occurred to them that there might be people below the edge.

I like to think that 99% of this behaviour is ignorance rather than malice. Still want to avoid the place from now on though!

On my last visit, given the number of Chinese people there taking pictures, I assume Bamford features in some Tik ToK type bo##ox. 

I believe it's a Korean hot-spot due to a K-Pop band doing a photo shoot there.

The story I heard was that Bamford Edge was in some kind of "10 things to see when you come to study in Sheffield" publication aimed at Chinese students. All 3 could be true of course!

Loving the methods of dealing with miscreants. 

I heard the K Pop answer to the recent influx, also a Chinese TV show called Bamford Edge, whether that's true I don't know.

I've been magotted while in a kayak, so I would be delighted if the favor could be returned. 

I got an ant's nest dropped on me by kids (same school) once. Bad!

Surely you are embarrassed to admit to knowing such stuff?

Surely you are embarrassed to know such stuff?

What stuff? Blowpipes, slingshots or K-Pop? Or all these things?

K-Pop, obviously! Sounds like something Musk drinks 😉

I think he prefers tears.

Well, K-Pop is rather niche. My main area of expertise are J-Pop and C-Pop (none of which should be confused with the UKC domain of E-TPS)

That’s been the case for far longer than TikTok has existed. I wonder whether Bamford may have been in some “things to do in the UK” list shown to Asian students.

It's also massively popular on "wild camping" social media which probably accounts for the amount of s**t i topped out to last time I was climbing there.