“It wasn’t until I turned 25 that I received my diagnoses of everything that’s going on. It’s been with me all my life, as far back as I can remember. It’s just the way I’m built, I have to live with it, so I try my best, in whatever way I can.” Gerard West is…
The Sport for Kids who Hate Sport
“At school I didn’t think of myself as athletic. I was always told I wasn’t. ‘You don’t play rugby, you don’t play cricket, you’re such a loser.” It’s hard to look at a photo of 50-year-old Michael Cartwright climbing an overhanging wall in Spain and imagine he was ever anything less than a naturally talented…
Climbing for people with disabilities
If ever there was a sport that seems inaccessible to anyone with disabilities it is climbing. It takes place on remote hillsides or overhanging walls, it requires full commitment and no mistakes, you need all your facilities intact. You can’t imagine a blind man walking to the base of a wall with his guide dog –…
A Woman’s Place is on the Wall
If you ask people to imagine a climber, they’ll probably visualize someone who is thin, strong, young – and almost certainly male. A young man, biceps bulging, doing a series of pull-ups with his feet swinging free below him. In fact, the blazing new talent who on track to become the world’s hardest climber is…
Climb Every Mountain
Welcome to the first of a 5-part blog series about the many benefits of climbing and why you – yes, you! whoever you are – should try it. And I am talking about the kind of climbing that involves hanging from vertical walls by your fingertips, not about hiking up mountains. (Although you should try…