West Country Climbing Sites
Suspension Bridge Arête (HVS), a seminal Avon route from 1956. Donna Kwok climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
Avon Gorge
The ultimate urban crag? Yes and no. At ‘Avon’ you could well find yourself balancing cautiously up the slabs of a powerful limestone gorge – an SSSI with rare flowers and trees and birds of prey, and graceful Leigh Woods nature reserve as your armchair. Yet your every space is filled with the thunder of Portway traffic pumping to and fro in service of the city of Bristol, the economic heart of the West Country. It’s sometimes hard to forget that half a million people work, rest, and play just above, just out of view. But some play games here too, embroiled in decoding the intricacies of the steely walls of Avon Gorge, Bristol’s exemplar natural resource.
You can take a crag tour by using the link below.
Beverley’s Wall (F6b+), Spacehunter Wall. Mandy Perry climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
Cheddar Gorge
There’s a lot in Britain that aligns with ‘small is beautiful, but small’. Not Cheddar Gorge. Here,150-metre high faces rise from awestruck tourists to crests of pinnacles tiptoed by feral goats and summited by the surefooted. A long time ago climbers were outcasts – tolerated only in frozen winter days, their numb fingers and icicled beards invisible to the value-set of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. That all changed in the noughties, thanks to the Cheddar Gorge Climbing Project working in collaboration with Longleat Estate. Summer climbing became a reality, and with routes reopened along came the community – clipping, chattering, and relishing the new dawn. Cheddar Gorge climbing is brilliant, but – especially with the visiting public so close by – it is bound to remain highly sensitive. So, above all, carefully read the access notes before visiting, climb safely for others, and sustain the warm welcome we’ve been given.
You can find out all about the access requirements, and take a crag tour, by using the link below.
Clip up Cheddar Gorge and/or bring lots of wires to go big bad trad
Esgaroth (HS), The Arkenstone. Simon Fletcher climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
Goblin Combe
A leafy and delicate little sister of the area’s two main gorges, which sports a fine selection of nut-protected climbs of all grades. Those into Tolkien will be at home here: hobbits’ route names abound and there have even been sightings of Gollum skulking behind the yew trees chewing ticks. It’s been a fave place for locals ever since the 60s, and quieter again while nearby Bristol Airport’s air-time has been impoverished by COVID restrictions. In winter you can despatch the gloom and damp and dogs of the valley floor for the Vitamin D-centric Arkenstone and Eagle Rock sunshine. But do respect the nesting ravens, tread carefully, and keep an eye on the BMC’s Regional Access Database (RAD) for any access developments.
You can download a free guidebook to The Climbs of Goblin Combe using the link below.
Bouldering on Black Rocks (a.k.a. Riverside). Pic: Jonathan Crocker
The Frome Valley
Breathe in the pungent earthy aroma of the River Frome, and you could be no place other than Snuff Mills, an historic park in Bristol, or adjoining Oldbury Court Estate where the Fishponds kids play. Greyscale memories of fishing for sticklebacks in the 60s come flooding back. At that time most of the Coal Measures sandstone crags and quarries were covered with ivy. But more recently a sustained decloaking effort by a handful of locals helped release a wonderful resource for residents with rockshoes. OK; there’s the dust, the cobwebs, the rain of beer cans, the dogs snapping at your heels: it’s an acquired taste, but just think of how much further away The Gap, Lawrencefield, and Harrisons are!
Terrorist (F7b+), Armistice Wall. Guy Percival climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
The Trym Valley (Henbury) Gorge
Gorge number 3 in Bristol: who could claim we city-folk are not spoiled? In summer the Hazel Brook is a mere stream, though sufficient in past glacial times to scour out a montage of sheer white limestone outcrops and a seat for Goram, the lovelorn giant. Your kids will revel in the folklore and tear around the nearby playground of Blaise Castle estate. And for you there’s bolt climbing on fingertips and bold climbing on holds-that-rip: the gorge is a trim microcosm of much that city limestone can offer those without a car to go far.
Climb into Goram’s Chair at The Trym Valley Gorge
Highway One (E4 6a/F6c+). Matt Woodford climbing. Pic: Don Sargeant
Portishead (Old Black Rocks) Quarry
A popular site with a split personality. Most visit for the sunny 40-metre high slab where feet come first. Here in winter you can strip to T-shirts while others shiver in onion layers. In summer quick-draw cohorts retire to the shaded flaky boilerplates where micro-crimping and edging deliver oddball sport up to F7c+ including West Country quarry classic Highway One. Cherries to pick indeed, which explains how the quarry has been done to death by guidebooks seeking money-routes. I won’t add to the overload, save for recycling the existing 2004 guidebook script, partially updated: you can download the free Portishead Quarry climbs here. And anyone interested in the work carried out in 2007 might refer themselves to the legacy pages for an anecdote or two plus pics.
Enter the Kettlebell (F7c+), Culver Cliff. Jack Bradbrook climbing. Pic: David Bradbrook
The Portishead to Clevedon Coast
A fascinating seaweed saunter twixt the two Bristol Channel towns may leave you marvelling at the area’s eclectic geology – or stuck in mud. This mysterious coast has much to offer, if only to those receptive to all things wacky and weird. First there’s the dolomitic conglomerate of the many bouldering crags, replete with huecos, sandstone bricks, and blushing bugs. Visionaries climbed upon them as long ago as the 1930s. Then there’s the Old Red Sandstone underbelly making a guest appearance for Culver Cliff, a relative newcomer that features a lactic acid bath of F7s for boastful biceps. Forward to the Triassic, ye olde favourite Ladye Bay (which was packed to the pebbles with beach-bums during summer 2020 lockdown) is joined by oolitic sandstone compatriot High Cliff, a paradox of smallness with gritty bolt climbing. The coast is rounded off by the Carboniferous’s Poets’ Walk, a hangout of Coleridge’s who left its serious limestone cliffs to his imagination but not ours.
All these crags are covered by the free North Somerset Coast mini-guidebooks I’ve made available in the downloads page.
You can access Weird, climbing the wrong end of the Bristol Channel (High magazine, 2004) using the following link.
Prow (f7c+), Middle Hope. James Squire climbing. Pic: Ian Squire
Sand Point
A chillaxed outpost, beautiful for climbing, walking, and soaking up sunsets. This National Trust-owned peninsula is North Somerset’s prettiest coast by a country mile. The limestone’s good too, thanks to the purging sea which seems to swallow the cliffs whole at high spring tide. Some really attractive easier climbing on wave-splash pockets and razor crisps is matched by state of the art bouldering above pebbles. During spring and summer there’s a fighting chance that a day out with the family should leave everyone satisfied, albeit with a few scags and flappers. Take your tape.
You can download the free Sand Point climbs guidebook by using the link below.
All Quiet on the Weston Front (V2). Simon Fletcher climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
Toll Road Crags
A pencil-lead stripe of limestone crags underpinning the colloquially known Toll Road at Weston-super-Mare happens to be the finest bouldering site in the Bristol area. (Well, that’s my opinion anyway.) Diamond-hard limestone up to 10 metres high offers solos, headpoints, and myriad problems that are climbable all-year round. Its private life started as an 80s winter lunchtime venue, but – with a guidebook now available – it’s likely to see crowded beaches and many scalded for being late home for dinner. Swing Cavern and Toll Walls are obligatory stop-offs; don’t miss Nureyev at the former, and Dancing in Polar Reaches at the latter – both essential V5/6s.
You can download the free Toll Road climbs by using the link below.
Crack o’ Diamonds (E3), Ocean Wall. Matt Ward (the first) climbing. Pic: Martin Crocker
Brean Down
In talks with Natural England during coast path consultations I couldn’t resist commending the idea of a footbridge linking Uphill with Brean. Too much to hope for, of course. But I suppose the allure of Brean Down as a soupçon of Mediterranean exotica would have diminished had the tortuous approach road been superseded.
There’s much more to Brean than the high octane, if over-spun, sport routes which Matt Ward and I developed in the 80s, so popular now with the bucket-and-spade brigade. First there’s the daunting rampart of Ocean Wall (laced with fierce yet elusive trad monsters), then the alien crusts running seawards (great for bouldering and pottering), then the rip-currented sea-cliffs at the Point (deep water soloing even – for the brave), and lastly reclusive Axe Quarry (to escape the summer heat and share beta with climbers on Uphill Quarry opposite). Since John Hone’s education-led discoveries in the 1960s, Brean Down has modestly hosted the liberalisation of West Country climbing, without compromising the past.
Join the Brean Machines at Brean Down. (A west-to-east pic reel, majoring on some of the Down’s odd spots and bouldering.)
Judgement Day (E1). John Harwood on the first ascent in 2008. Pic: Martin Crocker
Uphill Quarry
Boat percussion. The wind has its say, orchestrating, rudderless. As it rises from the west so do the rhythms from the boatyard - masts and cables rattling, chinking and chiming. They interweave in and out of time; aleatoric perhaps, patterns in the hollow metallic gossip indecipherable even to drummers. Yet everything has its natural frequency. Everything can be notated.
Ominous-yellow Uphill Quarry is windworn yet not forlorn. A striking sheer wound, cursed by the graveyard above, but blessed with sublime 25-metre face routes on crystal smidgens and dolomitic pancakes. Many suitors come, but Uphill Quarry is not a place for the faint-hearted, and skirmishes are only won with tungsten mindsets, the fear of God, and a hearty breakfast. Hang on in there.
In due course I’ll recycle the Avon & Cheddar 2004 script (updated to include the unreported trad routes on the left wing and main face climbed 12 years or so ago).
Bring a cowbell to Uphill Quarry and party on…..
Shoot to Thrill (E4). Pic: Carl Ryan
North Quarry
It’s the criminal bite out of Crook Peak you can see from the M5 on your way down to your hols in Devon and Cornwall (I was brought up to call it Crook’s Peak). A 45-metre high north-facing slab holds promise of big single slab pitches. On it, ancient aid forays have left new-bolts-to-be, so not all the climbing here is of the run-out ilk in which the Avon & Cheddar area excels, too highly for some.
The place has an edge, even a bleak feel, about it. It’s serious for sure and any loose rock, of which there is much near the cliff-edge, gallops off down the slab, pranging the remains of old corrugated metal quarry sheds at the base with a crash-cymbal ‘clatter’. Recent years have seen a review of the site, guidebook plans often the driver behind such things. More bolts have arrived and no doubt more people. I have no expertise in any recent or ongoing makeover, but the information will sure to be or become readily available elsewhere. A walk up Crook’s Peak is a traditional West Country outing and not to be missed, ideally via the Wavering Down circuit.
Nail-biting moments at North Quarry
Tricky Dicky (E4). Pic: Beverley Crocker
Split Rock
Crags come in different colours: this one’s red, haematite red. Do battle with the routes but prepare to get ‘blood’ on your hands and suspicious magenta smudges on your freshly ironed white shirt. Such features, the essence of a place, can often be reflected in route names: Red Rag to a Bull, Crimson Dynamo and so on. Sometimes it’s fitting, and less of a strain on the imagination, to have a theme to assist the naming of routes – but it can go too far. Inculcating the absurd has been known to backfire on first ascensionists.
Split Rock is just that: a hill split by an east/west quarry of iron ore encrusted limestone. Fantastic, fingernail, rasping wall climbs adorn the north face and pulp your forearms, split your digits. It isn’t all desperate quick-on-the-draw country mind you; kind geology has created pocket-lines and nut-cracks of a more accessible grade. And you’ll often toast in winter sunshine, so long as the beast from the east – a perfect venturi – doesn’t rake your flesh from your bones and feed it to the witch of Wookey Hole.
See red at Split Rock. (The 2004 Avon & Cheddar area guidebook text – to follow.)
Volume Eleven (E3). Ian Butterworth climbing. Pic: Mike Raine
Fairy Cave Quarry
The antithesis of Split; no pegs, no bolts, no threaded cord. Just bare slabs, a panoramic expanse of them with big run-outs and little run-outs, but also a few cracklines eager to swallow wires and get you attuned in perfect safety. Tilted at 50 to 60 degrees, the limestone’s smooth, rippled bedding planes mean lots of balancing around, beating hearts, and finding faith in friction.
One day I watched in horror as someone slipped off one of the western slab routes. His gear ripped, but he just slid on his feet – like an about-turn Eddie the Eagle – all 12 metres to the bottom of the crag. And casually started back up again. The routes are that compelling.
And the adventure above ground is matched by the adventure beneath. Quarry blasting broke into a variety of hidden cave systems, some beautifully decorated; and thus we share the quarry with our caving friends. Access to the quarry is carefully controlled, so you must visit the BMC’s Regional Access Database and get the lowdown before entertaining climbing here.
If you visit in late June, don’t mistake for tinnitus the beat that’s throbbing the whole of Mendip – it’s only Glastonbury Festival calling. Or maybe it’s the fairies underground with a 10K rig.
Dance on toes at Fairy Cave Quarry
Draycott Sleights. Pic: Beverley Crocker
Other Avon & Somerset area crags and quarries
Arbitrarily swept up by this section are the remainder of the significant local crags – some more important than others. Chief amongst them are the quarries of Sandford and Holcombe, the former adding to the area’s trad slab fayre, the latter offering unusual sport climbing of great interest. Both have access limitations, so it’s best to keep up to date using the BMC’s RAD. Many more quarries pit the Mendip ridge including Black Rock, which provides a pre-Cheddar winter warm-up for the cautious, but there are also some quaint and somewhat wayward limestone outcrops too: at Croscombe you can solo on puddings or pockets; and at Mells and Dinder Wood you can enjoy solving peaceful woodland puzzles with and without ropes. Not quite a lifetime’s local possibilities, but there’s always the rest of the world.
In addition to those above, at some stage you should find on the downloads page some texts from the 2004 Avon & Cheddar area guidebook. Please make sure you refer to the BMC’s RAD before using them.