As a little aside it's also comforting to know that the Bowder-dash along the b5289 from keswick to the bowderstone has had 0 road deaths in the last 10 years (compared to all the other roads in the country. As its hazards are impressive with lakes boulders, and rivers all being bumper crumpling fodder for the speedy driver, not to mention the ramblers who insist on sampling the fine asphlat rather than muddy their soles on the unsatisfactory lakeside footpaths or hill foot trails. This stretch is home to many a quality turn and i have a feeling Norbury or Hocking hold the informal record of Styan-Keswick roundabout. It is also the scene of my one and only Street race! By street race i mean i was 18 and was driving the Morris Traveller home at quite a jimmy lick (for a morris) when i caught up inevitably with a car, it was a toyota MR2. Dusk was in full ascendancy so i flicked on the old Blickers and what'd you know but the guy sped up... alot. Great i thought, this never happens so i pegged it along behind him and kept up doing 45-50ish most of the way as i know the road well. We got to keswick and he started behaving funny and indicating but not turning off. when it finally came to my turn he swung in ahead of me and gave me a thumbs up and a cheery wave then sped off towards Bassenthwaite. Good Times.

After a nice chin wag with Steve Blake the other day he tipped me off about a couple of decent gaps in the county. One of them was at St Cuthberts Cave. This spot is much frequented by tourists and prior to visiting i had it in my head to keep a low key and just climb there with minimal-no chalk and not report anything. Anyway. we arrived (to a group of ramblers pissing in it) and needless to say it is, by far, the most disgusting and crap-clodden of all the venues i've ever visited in northumberland. In fact Bell Hagg is in a far better state. It has become a custom to engrave your name in the cave if you are suitably lobotomized enough to think it is the only decent way of remembering your day out. To top this (which i can just about understand and wouldn't mind on its own) people have started slapping hippyish fingerpaint-splodge-cavepaint-spill-the-paint-bucket-swirlitabout-ooh i'm so pissing spiritual-art crap to the walls. the self punishing Cuthbert'd actually love that i bet! together with the piss stench and rubbish. Ah yes the Rubbish. The Cave has become a hangout for yoofs to get their kicks from what appears to be a crate of fanta, disposable barbecues litter the scene with broken glass and johnny packets. So rather than going to climb in a beautiful secluded woodland venue away from the wind. Towel on the ladder to protect the graffiti from getting smudged

We found ourselves in a pissy-smoke clad teenage after party. Unfortunately the line was nice and the rock was actually pretty decent (think Bowden before getting eroded back to a sand dune) As you can see the landing was perfect, except the broken glass definitely added up the injury potential to be more like E10 if you missed the pads. I chose to leave the glass there to preserve the danger aspect for future repetitions. In order to prepare for such a dangerous solo i tied my paltry 10m rope (never mind the massive trees 10m behind the crag) to a tree root to ab the line. This helped me get in the right mental state as i knew at any minute it could snap and dirt me onto the used condoms and glass, thus rendering me dead in minutes. And people wonder why foreigners never travel to try our classics! I abbed the line and checked the holds weren't so sandy as not to be worth climbing. The upper rock was actually really nice and fairly solid. (the belay was bomber btw, i have a little penchant for abbing lines of the bare minimum of stuff, as i figure i am planning to fall off anyway so it doesn't matter if it rips. It is amazing what will hold your weight if you are careful, katie kindly offered to watch the tree root just incase and sat on the rope whilst i went over the edge :)   )

Anyway it succumbed a few attempts later. a run and jump start leads to a sooty roof traverse to some lovely scallop crimping and then a spicy top out on fairly good holds. I actually have no idea what grade it should be. If it was in a nice venue i'd bother naming and grading it but it feels wrong to do so here. It is pretty disgusting what has been done to the place. and i'm sure the national trust wont be over the moon. I feel estranged from the general public at times like this as this is one of their main natural attractions in northumberland in terms of places of interest. As a climber i initially felt guilty for approaching a site which is famous for being the resting place of northumberland's most famous saint for a time, especially when so many other crags are out there which aren't a dead saints pit-stop. It seems to some peoplea cave is a cave is a cave. Piss, shit, graffiti, shag in it all you like, get your kicks where you can. If i visit next time i'll go armed with a binbag and gloves. This is an area which could do with climbers visiting and cleaning it up. Or it could do with people visiting who appreciate overtly scenic places remaining that way. It is a beautiful spot otherwise. Once it is clean then climbing here could do with maintaining its beauty, the rock is too soft to take loads of traffic, yet many of the lines are also tricky looking so it is likely to self limit traffic. There seem to be lots of issues here which i'm too stupid to solve myself. Is climbing wrong here? is it any less wrong if  the place is being trashed by the general public and we might clean it up a bit? is it worth climbing at such a scuzzy venue? would it be more wrong if we cleaned it up then trashed it with chalk and rock erosion? Is it even worth giving a shit if so many others don't?