Classic Rock - a 30 year adventure

So we did it! We climbed K2 and the other 5 Staffordshire Classics on one windy, bitter March day. Rain beckoned as we tentatively set off up the final route of the day but held off long enough to balance up technical slab, probably the worst of these routes to find yourself rained on. The day began over at Hen Cloud; none of us had climbed there before; the book had brought us here. After the dry winter it didn't live up to it's damp and green reputation and gave a good morning's climbing. K2 - not as tall as it's name sake but a great start to the day with a couple of challenging moves to warm up on; unfortunately the wind was so biting that it felt like the real K2 on pitch 2 where not being able to feel your hands made the crux feel quite tenuous pulling through a rounded break. Modern - one of 2 single pitch climbs today, a few sustained moves to enjoy. Central Climb - what to say about pitch 1; have you ever wrestled a rockface? We've no idea what techniques w...

For about 12 years, a copy of the ubiquitous climbers' coffee table compilation Classic Rock has sat in our lounge, thumbed through and talked over but never seen as a tick-list. After an amazing sunny weekend in February 2019 which saw us experience 4 Classic Rock routes we realised that over that 12 years we'd inadvertently ticked off about 20 of them. It was soon suggested that since we were a quarter of the way through the book anyway, surely the obvious thing to do would be to "finish them off" and so a long-term ambition was born; a climbing partnership cemented for the long-haul. We're not the first to attempt it and we're not doing it quickly, or cycling between them or anything else that would make us unique. But we aim to finish them all at some point before we're too weak to do so. So join us on what may be a 30 year journey of snatched weekends and bits of family holidays as we experience all that Ken Wilson described as "Classic". As...