Blog Archive - 2009
18th Dec 2009 Copenhagen Petition
Yesterday I signed an online petition to the leaders at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Here's a bit of info about it in case you want to sign too: Dear friends, Wow. Yesterday, the media...
1st Dec 2009 Film Festivals - Why Go To Them?
Just over a week ago I returned home, exhausted after a very long weekend's work at the Kendal Mountain Festival. Kendal is the biggest festival of its kind in the UK, and some say in the world....
22nd Oct 2009 Formative Years
Last year my Dad invested a lot of time and energy into scanning a load of his old slides. The results are a little fuzzy at times, but I'm so grateful to him for having buckled down and recorded...
5th Oct 2009 Deep Water Soloing
A while back I Blogged about Deep Water Soloing (or DWS). Bacl then I was sitting in a rainy office dreaming about it. Well we just got back from a pretty awesome 10 days actually doing it in...
15th Sep 2009 Most common mistakes made by adventure film makers when submitting to festivals.
I watch a lot of films. It’s part of my job. I run the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival and also programme for the Kendal Mountain Festival Film Competition. In the last year I reckon I’ve...
11th Sep 2009 Texting Whilst Driving
I saw this today and figured it should be passed around. It's pretty graphic, but all the more sobring for it.
4th Sep 2009 The Ultimate Tick-List
If you like ticking things, and you like traveling you'll love this site. Tick the countries you've been to and it fills in a map of the world and shows you where you've visited (and where you...
1st Sep 2009 Chez Arran
It's been over a month since I last blogged. The reason? We've been relaxing at a friends' place in the South of France. John and Anne Arran moved to the Ariege region of the Pyrenees about 8...
29th Jul 2009 Frisbee Golf
In the pub after the Raft Race somebody laid down a challenge: to come up with something equally good fun, as well as being totally pointless, but very competitive. Pete, man of many talents, rose...
24th Jul 2009 Raft Race
A quick one. Been busy of late recovering from Cliffhanger and tidying up loose ends. It was a roaring success with 20,000 people there over the weekend. It rained heavily, but after we closed the...
6th Jul 2009 Preparation
Cliffhanger is on this coming weekend. It's now in its third year and seems to be going strong. Sheffield City Council approached me having seen my website back in February 2005. I was abroad...
23rd Jun 2009 Working with TV
A couple of weeks ago we were awarded a grant from Yorkshire Forward for Cliffhanger. We didn’t get the money we'd applied for for additional PR and general event growth, but we did get the...
15th Jun 2009 Wild Swimming
Without a doubt one of the best things my parents did for me as a young kid was to teach me to swim. I didn't get my first bike until 11 (failed my cycling proficiency test two weeks after getting...
9th Jun 2009 Some Useful Websites
Thought I'd post a few of my favourite 'useful' websites on the assumption that some people may not have discovered them: First off, if you have a phone account that includes all calls to...
7th Jun 2009 Two Great Videos
Two very different videos to lighten your mood: Over 6 million hits on YouTube in just over 6 weeks. That's almost on a par with Susan Boyle! What this guy can't do on a bike ain't worth...
5th Jun 2009 ChezArran
How excited am I? Not only do I have exotic friends who go off and live abroad, but I'm going to stay with them for a whole month. I've known John and Anne Arran since the early days of...
18th May 2009 Two Great Steves
Sheffield is home to two very important guys in the world of sport, both named Steve, yet if you were to ask your average Sheffield resident if they’d ever heard of either I suspect the answer...
15th May 2009 A Warning To All Shunters!
I thought I was a fairly experienced climber. I am a fairly experienced climber actually - I started doing it 17 years ago so blinkin’ well should be. However I learnt the other day that being...
8th May 2009 Perfect Bouldering Addition
Check out this telescopic ladder! No need for fiddly stick clips or long brushes ever again. I might just buy one!
6th May 2009 Snakes & Ladders
Continuing the theme of fringe-climbing activities I headed out on Sunday to the Llanberis slate quarries with some friends on a mission to follow 'Snakes & Ladders', a 4 hour adventure...
28th Apr 2009 Weaseling & Jumping
Its official definition is to be evasive. It's modern definition is somewhat different. Practiced for decades my a few, weaseling seems to be on the up. It's a cross between rock climbing and...
27th Apr 2009 Twitter
Am experimenting with the various social networking sites out there and have just set up a Cliffhanger group on Facebook, and tried to get my head around a Twitter account. Feel free to sign up if...
27th Apr 2009 The Weather!
Am loving this spell of weather. I can't actually remember the last weekend on which it properly rained. We had a brief shower on Saturday morning, but that was a mere blip in another, otherwise...
17th Apr 2009 DWS
It’s raining, cold and windy outside my office windows. Perfect running weather, but not much good for anything else. Perfect weather for dreaming of summer plans. After last year’s dismal...
15th Apr 2009 Wild Camping
It's a bit of a taboo subject Wild Camping. It's not encouraged, there are no guidebooks, but people do it, and generally get away with it. We went to Snowdonia at the weekend for a family trip....
8th Apr 2009 Ray Lamontagne
I get to watch a lot of films as part of my work. Ski films, bike films, adventure travel films, and of course, climbing films. It's one of the more fun sides to what I do. If I'm being frank, a...
7th Apr 2009 Blogging
Bit of an experiment this. First Blog post on the new site. The new site. It's incredible, the feeling of elation at having a new site at last. I had no idea that I wanted (or needed) one so...