blocspenwith

serpentine

It’s amazing how exploration around West Cornwall can turn up new problems. I wouldn’t suggest that this is a great problem, but it would get stars if it had a top out, was accessible for more than a couple of hours at low tide and wasn’t either in the sun or wet! I’ve also been…

the eternal return…Godrevy and Nietzsche.

For Nietzsche active nihilism was the capacity to instill value, for to project meaning is the prime expression of the will to power, the sole underlying motive force of the world. Malcolm Bull in Anti-Nietzsche says that for Nietzsche ‘this final form of nihilism is the point of transition, the moment of metamorphosis into a…

marazion cliff slumps

All images taken from more or less the same spot on Marazion beach. I’ve been walking the dog along the bottom of these cliffs for five years now. They are in a constant state of slippage, boulders appear through the skin of the red earth face and then over time and slip out onto the…

topos

I’ve put together a list of online topos. The first three are all very old and from the blocspenwith site, which no longer exists. They are out of date and not all that good, but at least they exist. The clodgy topo is much better and is the work of Barney Carver. The Rusty Peg…

Bits and bobs, from vimeo

Currently putting together a new website and coming across old stuff. Spent a good evening session at Godrevy last week, messing around on cracked pot, sand levels were very low around trigonometry, that and high sand in the bowling alley spoiled my aims of projecting. Its such a fickle spot though, stuff falling down, holds changing. Strange seeing problems…

marks and slopers

After printing out some text for my PhD, I was struck by the reproduction of the above image. The sloper on the boomerang boulder, the crux of my recent attempts to traverse the boulder.I used the image to illustrate the role of the chalk marks as trace or residue of performance. I was also drawing…

Porthleven studio

Porthleven studio, art and training, filmed by Graham Gaunt in 2013.

Carn Brea

Thanks to Adam for filming it and posting on YT. Obviously it’s not the 3rd assent (ascent). The problem is ‘the bloodstone arete’. I don’t know who did the first ascent? For a long time there was a cheat-stone which facilitated a hop into a mantle. Barney Carver dispatched the cheat-stone down the hill some…

Trencrom

‘ Crow Over’ 7a+, Trencrom, West Penwith. Really very good arete problem, starts with hands chest high on flakes.

evening song

Happy to say I have climbed ‘evening song’ up on Carn Brea, which I think is the FA. It’s the longstanding sit start project to ‘evening son’. It adds about 7 moves to the original stand up. I have a video if anyone fancies buying me a pint for the beta, its complex! Gradewise It’s…