Blog Archive - 2013
18th Dec 2013 Hope Valley Rail Plans - An Emergency Latte Please!
A friend who shall remain nameless once came to visit. She arrived into Manchester, rushed onto the slow train to Grindleford, sat down with a big sigh, and politely asked the conductor for an...
17th Dec 2013 Speaking Your Mind
A sentence at the end of this article by BBC cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew struck a chord with me. If you don't follow cricket then you may not know that England are currently Down Under...
12th Dec 2013 Programming A Film Festival
A few days ago was Dec 1st, the deadline for submissions for the Sheffield Adventure Film Festival. When ShAFF started out nearly 9 years ago we simply rented films from other more established...
1st Nov 2013 Inspirational Youngsters
Now I've blogged about taking risks with kids before, and I've also blogged about getting kids into the outdoors. It's with great pleasure that tonight I am going to meet a whole host of young...
18th Oct 2013 Cracking The Spine
Despite the dubious title that has shades of traumatic injury in it I thought this project deserved a wider audience so have decided to write a short Blog piece on it. Andy Mouncey approached me...
16th Oct 2013 The Cost Of Film Festival Submissions
I was lucky enough to have a budding filmmaker stay with me for a night recently by the name of Tom Allen. He'd completed an amazing bike journey to quite a few corners of the globe and fallen in...
8th Oct 2013 Sponsors & Advertising
I read the other day that we are typically subjected to 50,000 marketing messages each day. It could have been 5,000 or 500,000, I can't quite remember. The figure is pretty meaningless, but the...
25th Sep 2013 More Haste Less Speed
I learned a useful lesson last night. The problem is it's one I have learned a thousand times before. I got a road bike back in November and rode it quite a bit over the winter and spring. For...
12th Sep 2013 Risky Business
I was lucky enough to watch a film last night called Project Wild Thing. It's not been released yet, but it soon will be. I'd picked up a flier at the last Cycle To The Cinema as the National...
28th Aug 2013 Montcalm Marathon - Race Report
Who’s idea was this anyway? That was my thought for much of the descent. All the way up I’d been enjoying myself, drinking in the surroundings and literally re-energising myself with each new...
23rd Aug 2013 Book review: 'Adventures in Mind' by Heather Dawe
One of the advantages of being married to an adventure sports writer is all the hand-me-down kit I get. It means I look like a clown sometimes in an array of clashing colours - a purple...
5th Apr 2013 Lack of women in adventure sports films
Sheffield Adventure Film Festival PR, Lissa Cook, talks to Jen Randall (Light Shed Pictures) whose debut film ‘Push It’ focuses on the story of her and a friend climbing the 1000m El Capitan...
22nd Jul 2013 Kids, Sport & TV
Something dawned on me the other night. I was sat down with my two boys. They are 4 and 7. We were watching the highlights programme on the Tour De France. I’d been watching it avidly each night...
18th Jul 2013 Strava
Strava is a a piece of software that’s quite literally revolutionised my running and biking. I’ve had a smartphone for a while and had experimented with various GPS tracking devices which tell...
28th Jun 2013 I Went Climbing
Wednesday turned out to be a pretty good day. Fairly last minute baby sitter (seems a little demeaning to still refer to looking after a 4 and a 7 year old as babysitting, but that’s the...
20th Jun 2013 Cash Cards For Kids
So my eldest turned 7 last week and we received a letter from our bank where he has an account to keep bits and bobs of money that he is given at birthdays. There was a nice pencil case for him as...
13th Jun 2013 Pedalling For Pennies
Thought I would write a short piece about a couple of inspirational ladies who live in my village. They’re setting off later today to cycle from London to Brussels to raise money for the...
16th May 2013 Pushy Parenting
I remember many years ago watching a young lad climbing at an indoor wall. His name was known to me as he was on the British youth team. He was being coached by his Dad who was being incredibly...
16th Apr 2013 Obsession.
I’ve held the opinion for years that top athletes need to be driven to be where they are. I know, it’s not exactly news, but bear with me. I read an article a few years back on the 10,000...
9th Apr 2013 Doing Stuff For Charity
A friend emailed me recently to let me know about a relative of his who is just about to embark on a mammoth cycle journey from South Korea back to the UK, raising money for charity along the way....
27th Mar 2013 Snow Tyres
Most winters the UK gets hit by some wintry weather and much of our infrastructure grinds to a halt. Comparisons are often drawn with European countries who experience the same and worse...
13th Mar 2013 ShAFF 2013 - The Best Ever
So it's over for another year. ShAFF that is. Life goes on and planning is well underway for Cliffhanger (Jul 5th and 6th) and the Buxton Adventure Festival (Nov 2nd and 3rd). Actually work is...
13th Mar 2013 Two Amazing Videos
Thought I would share two pretty amazing videos that recently featured on UKClimbing. The first is a guy taking a rather long tumble down Parsley Fern Gulley on Snowdon. Very lucky man. It's had...
18th Feb 2013 A humbling week.
A week or so back I had a pretty humbling time and I thought I’d write a few words about it. First off Lissa and I met with David Rutley MP at his constituency in Macclesfield. It’s not every...
8th Feb 2013 ShAFF Climbing Expert Night Review - Women’s Climbing Symposium
A few months ago watched this video by local filmmakers Outcrop Films. It piqued my interest. I’d heard of the Women’s Climbing Symposium before, and was aware that it had run for a second...
31st Jan 2013 The Advantages Of Being A Small Business
I set up Heason Events in 2003 off the back of a redundancy package from an IT firm that I hated working for. The early days were very exciting, if a little tentative. I kept my overheads low and...