UKC

What's in a 'route' name? Raisin Frumpsnoot!

© Ray Wood
Climbers enjoy naming routes. Sometimes they name them after a song or a book, sometimes a distinctive single word name that can end up as climbing product, Ben Moon's boulder problem, Cypher at Slipstones comes to mind, which is now also the name of Ben Moon's best-selling climbing pant. Ben Moon has some other route names that have special significance, including, Agincourt and the Maginot Line. Hopefully we are all familar with why Arthur Dolphin's named his Gimmer crag classic Kipling Groove. Dolphin reputedly spent almost as much time devising a suitable name for a climb as he had spent climbing it. Sometimes political, sometimes a pun, sometimes biblical, sometimes Tolkienesque, often musical, sometimes obscene.

Sometimes they are quite clever, and a little odd.

Raisin Frumpsnoot is the name of a new route climbed recently by Adam Wainwright at the Bus Stop Quarry near Llanberis, a 7b sport climb.

Any idea where it came from?

Apparantly it has something to do with the fourth wheel of a supermarket trolley which looks identical to the other three but renders the trolley completely uncontrollable and a word used to describe the right of the lord of the manor to molest dwarves on their birthdays.

What are your favourite route names and do you know their history?


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20 May, 2007
dont know how did he?
20 May, 2007
I don't know why Kipling's groove is called Kipling's groove? Why?
20 May, 2007
I think it was because it was Ruddy 'ard. Read that in one of the biographies, either the hard years or the villain.
20 May, 2007
'Darkinbad the Brightdayler' has a sort of mythical feel as a name. 'I ran the bath' is a top quality moniker for silliness 'I drink, therefore I am' as a corruption of the Descartes quote from Discourse on Method is quite witty.
20 May, 2007
Hands down, no questions asked, best route name is... Naddyn Ddu, from Brown (or was it Willans), genious, Northerner meets Welsh.
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