Simon Yates' The Wild Within-Review

It is generally accepted within the mountaineering writers union that anyone writing about Simon Yates has to begin by using 'best known as the climber who cut the rope' in the opening sentence.There.....I've done it; obligation fulfilled; but isn't that like describing a brilliant footballer like Roberto Baggio as someone who is 'best known for missing a penalty in a world cup final' !

Truth is, Simon has quietly spent the last 25 years making his own mark on the mountaineering scene with a series of accomplished achievements spanning the globe. Simon's latest book 'The Wild Within' chronicles the last 10 ten years of a multi faceted career which increasingly, has taken him to the the furthest flung mountain ranges on the planet.From Patagonia at one end of the Americas to to the Wrangell St Elias range at the other....from the Scottish Highlands to Karakorum....Simon has followed the call of the wild and consistently made impressive Alpine ascents in both in a Professional and recreational capacity.

Eschewing the traditional 'big is beautiful' approach,the author-often accompanied by climber artist Andy Parkins and old friend Paul Schweizer- has made a series of bold sorties upon remote virgin peaks and established hard new lines on 'conquered' mountains without fuss and without the rigmarole which is generally the lot of the big  team climber. In terms of climbing style, Simon's approach is just about as pure and ethically sound as you can get. In fact, at risk of overworking sporting analogies ,his style might be likened to a mountaineering Muhammad Ali as opposed to a barnstormer like Mike Tyson...floating like a butterfly but stinging like a bee!

For the average UK climber whose main logistical problem on a climbing expedition is where to park the Skoda at the Roaches, a sobering perspective is quickly applied when you read the author's opening account of the complexities of climbing a virgin peak in Patagonia.
A challenge which involves chartered yachts in the unpredictable South Atlantic waters; horseback treks with a Gaucho guide and a desperate gorge ascent to reach a glacier upon which no human foot has trod before. And that's before he and Andy Parkin have even begun to lay down the supply trail and actually climb the mountain they eventually name Mount Ada. The elaborate preparation which underpins even these small scale Alpine expeditions highlights just how small a part of an expedition the actual act of climbing often is.

Early in the book there is a fascinating insight into the making of the film version of Touching the Void which was directed by Kevin McDonald. Without going into too much detail, it is fair to suggest that Joe and Simon are not at the top of the director's Christmas card list and I can't imagine there's an open invitation for him to stay in Sheffield or Penrith either ! Goes to show; Despite TTV being generally well received by the public, the main protagonists perhaps take a different view. A view which might almost surreally have preferred to see the film made by Tom Cruise who was rumoured to be interested. OK...it might have turned out like Vertical Limit but maybe Joe and Simon would have had more fun making it than they obviously did with the director of The Last King of Scotland !

Interspersed with the mountaineering sections, Simon offers an honest account of his relationship with his partner and family. A role which quite naturally can burden the 'have rucksack will travel' mountaineer with a fair amount of guilt when they frequently choose to take their leave and put their life on the line in some remote and inhospitable mountain range. It is a fine balancing act which those who operate at Simon's rarefied level, must go through countless times throughout a long climbing career.
However, there is genuine warmth in his detailing of his life and times with his family,which includes simple family holidays, often just cycling around a remote Scottish island and sleeping under canvas or meeting up with them on his way back from leading a trek in Pakistan.

Another aspect of his mountaineering life which appears to give the author a measure of satisfaction and pleasure-apart from bringing in some hard earned capital-comes through his well rehearsed role as a mountaineering lecturer. For a long time now,Simon has gigged around the UK and beyond these shores, often to packed houses. It is a measure of his success as a mountaineer that the climbing public are only to keen to turn out on a cold rainy night in places like Stockport or Ayr, to enjoy the vicarious delights of these games without frontiers.

Simon's overall mountaineering philosophy these days is overwhelmingly to seek out the last remaining wild places on this tiny, crowded planet and to avoid as far as possible, the commercial over-kill which has rendered-even in the last ten years- certain mountain areas as as wild and untrammelled as Blackpool Pier!  However, there are, as Simon keeps discovering, still relative backwaters in  places like Greenland or in South America where new challenges await. Where virgin peaks are still without a first ascent-glaciers remain untrodden- gorges unexplored and caves yet to be discovered.

Even in the world's honeypot mountain venues,Simon postulates that there are still adventures to be found and new horizons to explore but ends by cautioning us that 'more than ever the mountains are what you make of them or want them to be.

The Wild Within takes the reader to the outer limits of mountaineering experience and frames the journey in all its elemental power and mystery. The author's first book for Vertebrate can be considered a success. It can only further cement his reputation as a romantic wanderer and wilderness narrator.


John Appleby

The Wild Within is published by Vertebrate Publishing.

The rocks of home

I was heading north now, and always most at ease when doing so, for Wester Ross, my summer paradise over forty years. Up there many of the mountains are so separate from their neighbours that they are as salient and single as Uluru or Gibraltar, Kata Tjuta or Square Butte or Masada.

So much so that Jim Crumley, most thoughtful of our wilder­ness writers, calls Suilven in Sutherland 'The Rock'. The best single Rock in all Scotland, the Soloist. . . ' The chief mountains of Wester Ross are virtually ranges, with multiple peaks — Beinn Eighe, Lia­thach, An Teallach — great saurians, or saurian families huddled against each other in their Precambrian sleep.


Beinn Eighe, a gathering of quartzite so blinding white it looks like permanent snow, is on such a scale that the three mighty rocks which gird its western face, the triple buttresses of Coire Mhic Fhearchair, are only a fraction of the massif. Their white snouts are like a range of kilns from the Potteries in their heyday. The hulks of Torridonian sandstone on which they are built are the dull red of furness embers. Layered lumps of it litter the corried floor — loaves and buns from the giant's bakery.


Corries always look to me as if they should cradle cultures. In Coire Ardair under Creag Meagaidh in north-west Perthshire, or in Birkness Combe above Buttermere, I find myself looking at each prone tablet of rock or ridge in the moor and wanting them to be doorsteps or lintels of old cottages, turf dykes round crofting townships. If red deer trot through, they are the cattle of the place. The lower lip of the corrie makes a threshold. As I cross it, it rises up behind me and peace encloses me. I have come home.

Since the last Ice Age the peace of Coire Mhic Fhearchair has been shattered once. In March 1951 a Lancaster bomber hit the face. Alloy shards still litter the scree. Pieces of fuselage shiver and chatter in the breeze. A wheel complete with tyre lies among the blaeberry and heather. In the burn an engine sits, seized solid, half-damming the flow.

Fifty years before, the first climb on Central Buttress had been led by the most magisterial of late-Victorian mountaineers — Norman Collie, a scientist of Aberdeen stock, who discovered neon and was the first person to take x-ray photographs. In those days people preferred the secure feeling inside a gully, however slimy, to the exposure out there on the rockface. Collie and his friends climbed the West Gully in snow, then traversed out left on to Central Buttress and stared up its steeps.

It struck Collie as 'A.P.' — Absolutely Perpendicular. They were so appalled that they sat down to finish off their sandwiches ('full of mustard and delightfully dry'), their prunes ('encrusted with all kinds of additional nutriment from the bottom of someone's pocket'), and their sweets ('a much-worn stick of chocolate and perhaps an acidu­lated drop'). Then they went home. They were not too appalled to come back next day and downclimb from the summit, to the cairn they had built to commemorate their lunch, before escaping into the gully.

Since that time ways have been found up the terraced labyrinth of the sandstone. For years I'd been toiling up and down the grating white screes above, swinging along the great loops of the skyline above the Golgotha of waterless corries to the north, even psyching myself to climb alone up the easiest line on Central Buttress one balmy July in the late 'seventies. Thunderous rains set in just in time to spare me the mortification of finding out that I had not the bottle to take on that 350-metre precipice by my own little self. Today, climbing it with Bill Birkett from Little Langdale on a day of Mediterranean warmth, I was comfortable, almost at home inside this maze of ramps and grooves. The huge quietude of the corrie, the air-space expanding away unbroken between Liathach and Beinn Dearg towards the blue berg of Harris beyond the Minch — it was all fusing into a tranquillity that brimmed up from the footsoles to the mind like water from the aquifer filling a well.

The sandstone is fine-grained, so old (about 750 million years) that it doesn't rub off as dust. As for the polar reaches above, the great blanched citadel, that was still not real, still a tract of some further continent refracted inside our present horizon like a mirage. The pio­neers here, very aptly, were Yorkshire gritstone climbers called Pigott and Wood. They climbed it in rain and 'longed ardently for sunshine. rubbers [gymshoes], and a stout heart, for the prospect of, say, six consecutive gritstone "almost impossibles" ' was almost too much for them. They felt at home, though, and the shapes of the rock kept reminding me too of Yorkshire. One airy stride-and-sidle on to a ramp up a ten-metre face was the image of a climb with the perfect name of Fishladder on Earl Crag near Bingley.

The sandstone foundation at last gave way to the quartzite super­structure. We strolled along a narrow garden ankle-deep in dewy grasses and clumps of thrift. The joint between brown rock and white was so distinct I could lay my finger along it and touch both simul­taneously, spanning the Paleozoic and the Proterozoic. Why ever leave this pleasance? Why not loll here as the sun moves out over the ocean and feast on this mountainscape, on its colossal volumes that arrange and rearrange themselves in my mind, or rearrange my mind, like fundamental sculpture? Yet again the upward imperative asserts itself. We must reach, reach. Up there, always, contentment waits.


Right here, a large ice-coloured shield — like some piece left untouched in the marble quarry at Altissimo near Forte dei Marmi used by Michelangelo and Moore — asks to be laybacked. Followed by another, and another and another. After seven of these I'm thirty metres above the terrace and not one foot of support below me is integral. 'The blocks hereabouts seem to rely mainly on mutual under­standing for their support' (Fred Pigott). Ahh well — each piece weighs, what, half a ton? We couldn't lever them off if we tried. Or so I tell myself, and at the tenth or fifteenth telling it has sunk in, helped by the exact horizontals of the strata, which mean that each piece has a dead-level foot set on the dead-level top of the one below.

Nothing can go wrong. After these hours of inhabiting the air, or the edge of the air, climbing has become slow-motion flying. When Bill joins me at a stance, he instantly sets off upwards, quartzite fragments and fibres of dried moss scudding under his feet. `Don't you want the gear, Bill?' I call after him. `Too heavy,' and up he goes. Soon the rope's red stem is the only sign that human life exists in the upper reaches of this narrowing tapering buttress.

This face should never end. There seems to be the entire passage of the sun's day in it, or the complete sequence of the year's benign half from equinox to equinox. At the finish I'm so thirsty and weary I lie flat on my back and let my vision lose itself in the fading blue above. To replace the sweat that day I drank a gallon of burn-water, still cold in its runnels of peat and stone beneath the heather.

Fifteen kilometres west-south-west lies Diabaig, my favourite place, a village whose harbour is ringed with rock, backed by glowing crags three hundred metres high, mouth facing out to the northern end of Skye with the Old Man of Storr erect on his mountainside. The Diabaig crofts, on slopes of Alpine steepness, are no longer worked and the village almost died. Then it renewed itself with money hard-earned at the Kishorn oil-rig dock and the salmon farm between the harbour and a deserted headland called Araid. From here I can't see those dear places, but I know they are there, the ways across to them and back through time to my family's seasons there feel as tangible as the sequences of footholds and handholds which have brought me to this spot.

David Craig

The Yearning

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had The Yearning…

Starting off as a passing thought, it seems innocuous enough. Usually triggered by a sunny morning or a glimpse of something on TV, caught out of the corner of the eye as I pass in a cafe or bar…

    “I fancy a climb”

It’s easily dismissed at this point, life’s distractions quickly intervene and it’s business as usual. Except that subconsciously it’s not. The seed has been planted; The Yearning begins.

The next day it pops up again, only this time it’s bigger – harder to dismiss. It’s not even prompted, it just shows up out of the blue:

    “I wish I was in the mountains.”

And it sticks around, I dwell on it for a minute or two – imagining fresh dew on grass, cool air cut by morning sun and the crag appearing through trees as day begins to break. Birds sing, all is quiet. Each footstep builds the silence; the proximity of the noise emphasising the vast calm that lies beyond… Suddenly the daydream is shattered – reality calls, all thoughts of tranquillity quickly stuffed down into the back of the mind. But before long it’s back, every few hours now – and the dwelling lasts longer.

Day three is when things really start to go South. Reality is no longer the rule; replaced by the feel of cool rock against chalked fingers, cold metal greeting a hand as gear is pulled from loops, the scratching signature of aluminium on sandstone and the nut finds it’s mark. The weight of the rope, the snap of a gate sliding closed. Fleeting moments of clarity punctuate the delirium but it’s already too late. All is lost… A growing emptiness wells up inside.

    “I’ve gotta get out. I need to get back to the mountains.”

Eventually I’m reduced to what I call “Half Jam”. Half Jam can’t function the way normal Jam does. He’s compromised. He forgets things – pin numbers, meetings, car keys, his name… He is consistently late. When engaged in conversation his mind wanders, eyes glaze over and mouth falls slightly ajar. Half Jam thrashes at the plastic holds on the indoor wall. Technique evades him as he climbs more forcefully, more angrily in a desperate attempt to sate The Yearning. But it doesn’t work… It never will. There’s only one cure for The Yearning:

White, fluffy clouds roll across the deep blue sky. The wind plays in the trees, snatching up leaves and carrying them away. Rope hums through an aluminium loop and somewhere below steady breathing is interrupted by grunts of effort. Hexes clang like cowbells as the second’s rack sways in time with each movement. The day is nearly done – just a short walk and a long drive separate this moment from food and sleep. But something has changed inside; gears shifted, a timer reset?

    “Nice one mate, you made that lead look easy”

And The Yearning is gone again.

James Carpenter

First published on Climbing Australia

Itching to Climb

Barbara James leading the Welsh classic Centotaph Corner-E2.5b (US 5.10c).Dinas Cromlech:Photo Ron James

By now I'd led two classic climbs, graded hard very severe plus in the Llanberis Pass. They were on a dramatic lump of rock, Dinas Gromlech, usually abbreviated to The Cromlech that stood like a vertically open book, above a steep scree slope.

The well-protected Cenotaph Corner, in the 'spine' of the book was a mixture of bridge and balance moves but Cemetery Gates, a climb on the vertical right hand wall was harder. I needed strong arms because hanging from the fingers of one hand, I needed the other to reach upwards and place protecting runner. I used my powerful thigh muscles as much as possible to move upwards.Added to this, as I moved upwards the length and weight of the rope behind me increased, making it harder to pull it up and clip the waiting karabiner above my head. I rested at the holly tree ledge before awkward moves led to a tiny belay ledge in an airy, dramatic position120ft (37m) above Barbara, my climbing companion.


Before climbing the wind had strengthened, blowing upwards the rope I'd taken in as she climbed; we were relieved to be off the crag before the weather worsened.The testing of my skill, stamina and mental strength involved in climbs like this enhanced the ordinary things of life. The well-earned pint tasted better and relaxing, tired by physical effort, was a superb feeling. Famous climber Joe Brown had done the first ascent of both these magnificent routes in the early 1950s, getting the idea for their names when he saw a bus with a destination 'Cemetry Gates'. All this was good training for our annual summer Alps trip.


Ron always spent many hours researching the next route that he wanted to climb. To lighten our weight he'd tear a page from a German climbing magazine or photocopy and translate a page from Walter Pause's book In Extremis Fels, 100 hard climbs in the Alps, that later was published in English. But no amount of fact-finding could give us success on the long north ridge of Monte Agner. Our goal was to get as high as possible, bivouac for the night and then finish the climb and descend next day. So in the heat of the rnidday sun we were walking up a dry river bed, full of boulders that reflected and increased the temperature.

The long, sweaty, uphill walk in the sticky valley heat was relentless, later, climbing up through downward pointing juniper branches was strenuous and we couldn't get as high as planned.After a sleepless night we'd drunk all our water; we turned back. Most climbers have a risk thermometer and with his priority for safety Ron's temperature reading was low; we never again tried to climb a route of this length.

Our favourite area was the Italian Dolomites with their rolling grass meadows leading up to impressive, huge rock faces; but the Sella Pass attracted me for another reason. The Treaty of Saint-German in 1919 consigned the South Tyrol to Italy and local Austrian traditions prevailed in the Val Gardena. I could assuage my chocoholic weaknesses with mouth-watering chocolate cake, Sachertorte.  It originated from Hotel Sacher,Vienna in the late eighteenth-century.


Usually we stayed in Refugio Passo Sella where the owner, Senora Capadozzi, spoke excellent English and always gave us a splendid welcome. From the nearby Demetz hut, where the LAC ladies had been feted, there was a steep slope in both directions. The precipitous, narrow descent challenged skiers because it was squeezed between rock walls. So when one winter the front of my skis touched one wall, turning the downhill ski 180" was easy. But moving the uphill ski wasn't. Somehow, eventually, I managed to complete the turn. Later these runs were closed due to the number of fatalities.


Another Dolomite speciality was the spectacular Via Ferrara, metal ladder-ways that were maintained by local guides. With minimal technical difficulty, thanks to wire hand rails to clip into, mountaineers could experience dramatic exposed positions that otherwise were the prerogative of Grade V I rock climbers. When Ron was guiding in the Brenta Dolomites, I soloed the Sentiero delle Bochette. I was enjoying the airy position when I reached a steep, snow filled gullet' whose slope not only disappeared from sight hundreds of feet below me but also the hand rail was buried. I crossed with great care!

Our evenings here were very special because at the Brenta Hut we had the pleasure and honour of meeting Bruno Detassis, a famous Italian Guide who spoke no English. Ron's good climbing vocabulary enabled them to converse while I chatted with Bruno's wife who's English was excellent. She impressed me when she said, "I have some trouble understanding old English."

Of all our wonderful experiences in mountains,five climbs were most memorable, because on each one I had different reasons to be worried.

Barbara James.

Extract from 'Itching to Climb'. Copies can be ordered direct from Barbara's website.

Pete Livesey: As the crow flies

Pete Livesey on the first ascent of Downhill Racer: (1976) Froggat Edge,Derbyshire PL

Pete Livesey drove British rock climbing to new standards during the Seventies. His speed, strength and stamina were developed young as a Yorkshire schoolboy running at national champion level. The seniors in his club included Derek Ibbotson, who had the current record for the mile, and the young Livesey developed the same kind of competitive dedication.

 He also had a natural talent for other outdoor sports, branching out into canoeing, rock climbing and caving. For a while he concentrated his efforts underground, becoming one of the best cavers in the world, joining expeditions to Jamaica, Greece and Ghar Paru, in Iran. It was only in his late twenties that he turned seriously to rock climbing.

His impact on the climbing world was almost immediate, starting in 1971 in the intimidating gorge of Gordale Scar with the first free ascent of Face Route, previously climbed only with the aid of steel pegs. That was the first of many bold, strenuous routes up fiercely overhanging limestone. As his close friend and climbing partner, John Sheard, put it, "For Pete to apply the definition `rock climber' to himself, it had to include the unspoken prefix `best'; anything else was playing around." A few might niggle over "best" but all would probably agree that Livesey brought a whole new attitude to the sport.

First there was his athletic background. The stamina, strength and speed developed as a schoolboy gave him a natural edge, which he honed by systematic training on the then new indoor climbing walls, particularly during his exile for a year's teacher training practice in the lowlands of Scunthorpe. That dedicated approach to training was new, but mere athletic skills were not enough to succeed hundreds of feet off the ground on steep, potentially dangerous, rock, following incipient lines of tiny holds which others had never tried to link before. Here mental control was everything.

John Sheard, who followed him up countless routes, observes: "Pete was totally competent and safe on things which would have killed the rest of us. He had an amazing ability to hang around and rest - and place fiddly protective equipment - on overhanging rock. When you got there you just couldn't see how he had done it."

Pete new routing in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1977:PL

Livesey left his mark far beyond the microcosmic world of Yorkshire climbing, particularly in 1974, when he discovered the tenuous, improbable line of Footless Crow, on Goat Crag, in Borrowdale. Later that year he travelled to Snowdonia to leave his signature on a cliff redolent with history - Dinas Cromlech. This was the scene of Joe Brown's great Fifties climb, Cenotaph Corner. Twenty-two years on, Livesey tackled the seemingly blank right wall of the great square-cut corner, linking a complex series of moves up tiny flakes of diorite. Right Wall is now an exhilarating classic enjoyed by hundreds of competent climbers, reared on a hundred gyms and armed with sophisticated modern protection devices. Twenty-four years ago it was an imaginative step into the unknown.

Beyond the parochial confines of British climbing, Livesey sought the scale of grander cliffs. In Norway he made the second ascent of the 5,000ft- high Troll Wall. In the Dolomites he free-climbed some of the great walls climbed originally with artificial aid. In Austria's Kaisergebirge he amazed the locals with his speed and stamina. In Provence, he showed what could be done in the stupendous Gorge du Verdon; where local experts rested on in situ steel pegs - and pulled up on them when things got a bit tough - Livesey climbed free, relying on ingenuity and the strength in his fingers.

His most elegant and celebrated new route here was Piche Nibou, although his own knobbly-kneed climbing style was more effective than elegant. He also dressed in the kind of stylish hand-me-down rags which would appal today's lycra-coordinated Gallic athletes.

Livesey also left his mark in California's famed Yosemite Valley. A partner on the first ascent of "Carbon Wall" recalls that, unknown to the rest of the team, Livesey made a recce the day before the climb, abseiling down the 500 feet of the route to inspect the difficulties. "It was typical of Livesey: he was always one step ahead of everyone else, particularly Ron Fawcett - he had to find ways to outwit Ron, because Ron really was the best climber in the world."

The young protege, Fawcett, eventually surpassed the master and, after climbing his Cheedale swansong Golden Mile in 1981, Livesey more or less quit rock climbing. He turned to orienteering, excelling at that pursuit just as he had done at all the others.

Pete Livesey directed the well-respected outdoor pursuits course at Ilkley and Bradford Community College and served on several committees of the British Mountaineering Council, but his greatest legacy is the actual climbs he created and the impact he made on rock climbing. He took his own climbing very seriously but the inner intensity was masked by a mischievous sense of humour and by moments of inspired theatricality, such as the time he made one of the first free ascents of the famous Welsh climb Tensor, solo, in Hush Puppies.

Pete Livesey during the Footless Crow-Lakeland Rock filming session. Photo-Adrian Bailey















Peter Michael Livesey, mountaineer: born Huddersfield 12 September 1943; married Soma (one daughter); died Malham, North Yorkshire 26 February 1998.

Stephen Venables: Originally published in The Independent:17th March 1998. My thanks to Stephen for permission to republish.

Three artists paint Pembrokeshire

Graham Suthland: Western Hills 1938

A short break in Pembrokeshire set me off in search of painters whose work reflects the shapes and forms, the light and shade of the land.  Like Cornwall, this corner of the British Isles has attracted many artists whose paintings have been inspired by the landscape of this county of craggy cliffs, golden sands and hidden valleys. Foremost among them are Graham Sutherland, John Piper and John Knapp-Fisher.

Although largely overlooked now, Graham Sutherland became one of the most famous artists in the world in the 1930s and 1940s, largely due to his passion for painting the Pembrokeshire landscape. Sutherland was born  in London in 1903, but did not begin to paint in earnest until he was in his mid-30s, when, after visiting Pembrokeshire for the first time in 1935, he began painting landscapes that were inspired by the inherent strangeness of natural forms, with echoes of the visionary paintings of William Blake and Samuel Palmer, as well as his contemporary, Paul Nash.

The first one-man exhibition of his oil paintings, mainly Welsh landscapes, took place in 1938. During the Second World war, Sutherland was an Official War Artist, painting scenes of bomb devastation and of war work in mines and foundries. He was at the height of his international renown in the 1950s when he was commissioned to design the huge tapestry of Christ resurrected for Basil Spence’s new Coventry Cathedral.

Graham Sutherland was so moved by the Pembrokeshire landscape that he  bequeathed a substantial collection of his work to the county in 1976, which for many years was exhibited in a dedicated gallery at Picton Castle. Then the gallery closed and for many years the collection languished unseen. Now, however, his works form a permanent part of the changing exhibitions at Oriel y Parc, the new gallery on the outskirts of St Davids.

When we visited the gallery, we found several works by Sutherland displayed as part of the current Stories from the Sea exhibition, including ‘Bird over Sand’ (1975) and ‘The Wave’. Sutherland once wrote about what brought him back, again and again, to this part of the country:

    " The quality of light here is magical and transforming. … Watching from the gloom as the sun’s rays strike the further bank, one has the sensation of the after-tranquility of an explosion of light.  Or as if one has looked into the sun and had turned suddenly away.  Herons gather.  They fly majestically towards the sea."

Another of Sutherland’s paintings on display currently is ‘Welsh Landscape With Roads’, painted at Porthclais in 1935, and on loan from the Tate.

Graham Sutherland: Pembrokeshire landscape-Valley above Porthclais 1935


The Tate’s note on this work states:

  "  Sutherland wrote that such paintings expressed the ‘intellectual and emotional’ essence of a place. He conjures up a sense of the landscape’s ancient past through the inclusion of the animal skull and what may be standing stones in the distance. The unnaturalistic colouring, dramatic shaft of sunlight and minuscule fleeing figure create a threatening atmosphere. While the theme of a tiny man dwarfed by nature was common in eighteenth century painting, Sutherland’s transformation of the landscape into a eerie, primordial scene is distinctly modern."

Sutherland would wander around the coves on St Davids head with a little sketchbook in his hand, searching the seaweed and driftwood, looking for objects with interesting shapes: eroded rocks, tree-roots, a bleached skull, strange branches, rusty chains.  All these details were isolated from their natural surroundings, and in his paintings and drawings were re-configured to express the emotions he experienced in the variety of forms seen in the landscape.

Sutherland was especially inspired by the topography around Porthclais, just south of St Davids.  When he painted ‘Road at Porthclais with Setting Sun’ he gave the motif of paths and sunken lanes wending through the fields a Palmer-like hallucinatory intensity: golden sun against black sky, darkness and brilliant light.

There’s a similar intensity in ‘Entrance to a Lane’ (1939),  Though apparently abstract, this painting represents a lane at Sandy Haven, in the south of the county. This painting is in the Tate collection, and their text for it reads:

  " By ‘paraphrasing’ what he observed, Sutherland felt he captured the essence of the landscape. This innovative technique fused the observational powers of John Constable with the daring of Pablo Picasso. The prominent black forms also reflect Sutherland’s debt to the landscape drawings of Samuel Palmer, whose work enjoyed a revival in the 1930s. This painting belongs to a tradition of images of wooded landscapes which seem to enfold the viewer. In 1939, with war looming, such a natural refuge may have had special significance."

The neo-romantic  English painter John Piper also came to Pembrokeshire for the first time in the 1930s.  He first became acquainted with the landscapes of south Wales in 1937 when he married Myfanwy Evans.  He made on the spot collages of Pembrokeshire beach scenes, and also became fascinated by Welsh architecture: the chapels, castles and ruins, which were to influence much of his later works. In 1963 he bought two abandoned cottages, with no electricity or phone, at the foot of Garn Fawr, the distinctive rock outcrop topped by an Iron Age fort that dominates Strumble Head.  From here, he set out to explore the surrounding countryside, ‘trying to see what hasn’t been seen before’, as Welsh painter Kyffin Williams expressed it.

John Piper: Caerhedwyn Uchaf 1981

Piper painted Garn Fawr many times, like Cezanne with Mont St Victoire, always finding a new way of revealing what he perceived.  The cottage is still there.

Like Sutherland, Piper paid homage to William Blake and Samuel Palmer; like him too, he was a war artist and contributed to the new Coventry cathedral (stained glass windows).

    " The titles (of my work) are the names of places, meaning that there was an involvement there, at a special time: an experience affected by the weather, the season and the country, but above all concerned with the exact location and it’s spirit for me. The spread of moss on a wall, A pattern of vineyards or a perspective of hop-poles may be the peg, but it is not hop-poles or vineyards or church towers that these pictures are meant to be about, but the emotion generated by them at one moment in one special place"
    - extract from European Topography by John Piper, 1969

    Louring clouds that belong to romantic painting hanging over a bare beach that might have been made for Courbet. At the edge of the sea, sand. Then, unwashed by the waves at low tide, grey-blue shingle against the warm brown sand: an intense contradiction in colour, in the same tone, on the same plane. Fringing this, dark seaweed, an irregular litter of it, with a jagged edge towards the sea broken here and there by washed-up objects; boxes, tins, waterlogged sand shoes, banana skins, starfish, cuttlefish, dead seagulls, sides of boxes with THIS SIDE UP on them, fragments of sea-chewed linoleum with a washed-out pattern. This line of magnificent wreckage vanishes out of sight in the distance, but it is a continous line that girdles England, and can be seen reappearing on the skyline in the other direction along this flat beach. Behind this rich and constricting belt against the sand dunes there is drier sand, sparser shingle, unwashed even at high tides, with dirty banana skins now and sides of boxes with the THIS SIDE UP almost unreadable. That, in whatever direction you look, is a subject worthy of contemporary painting. Pure abstraction is undernourished. It should at least be allowed to feed bare on a beach with tins and broken bottles.

John Piper: Pembrokeshire-A distant prospect 1964

  Our first encounter with the work of John Knapp-Fisher was when we came down to Pembrokeshire in the 1980s.  We came back with postcard reproductions of his distinctive watercolour and ink paintings with their limited palette of earth colours and striking chiaroscuro, often depicting brightly-lit whitewashed buildings emerging from a dark background (below).

John Knapp-Fisher was born in 1931, studied Graphic Design at Maidstone College of Art from 1949, and later worked  for the theatre as a designer and scenic artist. He moved to Pembrokeshire in 1965 and two years later opened his studio gallery in Croesgoch, a small village strung out along on the Fishguard to St Davids road.

Among the artists that Knapp-Fisher identifies as influences have been painters of the Cornishschool like Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis, as well as John Piper. In Cresswell Street, Tenby, the boat on the skyline seems to be a humourous nod to Wallis, as well as being a reflection of Knapp-Fisher’s lifelong love of boats and the sea  (he has built them, sailed them and lived aboard one for several years).

Knapp-Fisher’s name has become synonymous with Pembrokeshire landscape painting and his work is highly sought after by collectors in Britain and abroad.  He has exhibited widely and is now, one of Wales’ most popular and well-known artists.

John Knapp-Fisher: Cresswell Street, Tenby 1998

Knapp-Fisher has written an excellent introduction to his work in his book, John Knapp-Fisher’s Pembrokeshire, republished in a revised edition in 2003.  He writes straightforwardly, without pretension or pomposity, about his working methods and the things that inspire him:

   " With my work I tend to concentrate on small areas, often within walking distance of where I live.  I will go out in all lights and weather making notes and sketches – sometimes finishing the picture (if in small format) on the spot. "

   "  I am probably best known for ‘dark’ dramatic paintings with buildings catching the last rays of the sun against a stormy sky " … Most of the paintings in this oeuvre are inspired by day subjects of a light often seen on the north west Pembrokeshire peninsula.

Most of John Knapp-Fisher’s early Pembrokeshire paintings were done with inks and watercolours, but recently he has turned more to oil, and utilised  a wider colour palette.

     " Anecdotal views – pretty ‘photographic’ subjects are of no interest to me.  Pembrokeshire, like many other beautiful holiday areas, attracts artists who cater solely for the tourist industry.  I believe in decentralisation.  Why should London attract serious painters … while Pembrokeshire is relegated to a state of mediocrity?  Distinguished painters have worked here in the past – Turner, Sutherrland, Piper, Richard Wilson, Augustus and Gwen John, and David Jones – as well as a significant number in the present, both young and old. "

John Knapp Fisher

 " I have worked at my art when my spirits have soared and when I have felt low and alone.  I hope to continue to wander the paths and lanes, the seashores, farmyards and hills – sketchbook in hand"


Gerry Cordon

First published on 'that's how the light gets in'

Defending ancient springs

It was a space upon my crinkled and stained mountain map that demanded attention. The vast rough bounds of the south Snowdonia mountain Dduallt harboured within it's eastern maw the source of the Afon Dyfdwy- The River Dee. THE great Welsh river which coils from it's source within these saturnine cliffs and meanders through the Welsh English borderlands before spilling  into the Irish Sea. It was the outdoor and travel writer Jim Perrin whose book with renowned photographer, John Beatty, 'River Map',had first alerted me to this wild place as the source of the Dee. The writer reminding me of my task through a recent Guardian Country Life column which once again spun back to this sacred spring on the moors.

As something of a Dduallt enthusiast myself I had experienced most of what this rugged little armadillo of a mountain had to offer. I had laced up my rock boots and climbed on its rough little outcrops, delved into it's dank caves. Hunkered down into winter gear as vicious gusts blasted sleet into my face. Floundered around in it's glutinous encircling bogs and, on one occasion,was almost benighted within one of the dense coniferous forests which guard the mountain's western and eastern flanks. An ill planned excursion when a late start and stubborn refusal to cut short my plans left me watching an azure November sky bleeding into night, leaving me with no option but to enter the dark woods to the east in the hope that I could find a stream to follow.  I Reasoned  that eventually it had to reach the valley floor. A plan which fortunately worked as I tumbled scratched and bloodied out of the forest just as the last of the autumn light leeched away. Leaving just the blanket of  snow on the Arans to counterpoint the gloom.

It was late January weekend day which in a generally mild and wet winter in north Wales promised a rare day of clear skies and a still coldness. The Aran and Arenig massifs sported an impressive snow cover above 1500'. Even little 2000' Dduallt wore a cap of snow. As I arrived at my usual remote base for sorties hereabouts I was surprised to see an old 4x4 parked up. You can usually guarantee that even on a balmy summer bank holiday you can find yourself totally alone in this,one of the wildest and unfrequented parts of north/mid Wales. My companion-as had been the case in nearly all of my mountain walks in the past three years- was a four year old English Springer Spaniel.  Fergus was a rescue dog who had spent the first 6 months of his life locked in a shed with his siblings. Without exercise and stained with his own mess,the poor dog was a quivering wreck when the RSPCA team rescued him. Happily, he soon became a wonderful well balanced hound who would lead me up hill and down dale with all the enthusiasm and boundless energy which typifies the breed.

The previous year I was surprised to see the park authority had erected a finger post marking the trial through the forest towards the mountain. The first time I had attempted to reach Dduallt I had stumbled around in the truly horrible cloying tussocky fire breaks through the forest.Each time reaching an impasse and being forced to retrace my steps and attempt what became yet another dead end until I eventually gave up. The new marked path is equally mired and rough but at least you know that eventually you will arrive upon the flanking rough bounds of the mountain. The initial path which leaves the forest all too soon disappears and it becomes every wo/man for themselves as the walker is forced to pick a way through,bog, verdant heater and lethal hidden boulders before attaining a firmer course up the mountain's south ridge.

As mountain walking goes this is just about as rough and tough as it gets in Wales. Distance and elevation wise, it looks nothing on the map but the brutish terrain hereabouts more than makes up for its modest height. As always on these walks, I lose myself in thoughts. As I get older I certainly have become truly Wainwright-esque in my desire to be alone in the mountains. Well...not truly alone as a dog who barks me into movement every time I stop somewhat disturbs ones reverie, but even on terrain such as this which demands your full concentration,you can switch off and follow your thoughts in whichever direction they lead. I was pondering that strange age I was at when you are a lot closer to wearing a wooden overcoat than a swaddling shawl. Although physically I felt as fit and strong as I did thirty years ago,you become aware that after swimming wild and free in life's rich waters, there is a  noticeable tensioning in your lifeline and at this point, the reaper begins reeling you in. Still...as that great northern philosopher Noel Gallager once said.... ' Be here now '!

To reach what Jim Perrin describes as 'an ancient chapel' above the spring which marks the source of the Dee I had to drop down it's steep heathery eastern face dotted with hidden outcrops and water runnels. At least there was the stubborn heather to cling onto should you take a slide. A rough sheep track meanders under the face and soon reaches a wet bog where for some obscure reason, farmers had erected a fence. Not sure why cooperation has never been the name of the game in Welsh farming?  Surely it's easier on these rough shared bounds to gather in the flock in a combined effort and effect the necessary husbandry in a communal way than erect fences and walls everywhere? Although stone walls have some aesthetic merit and occasionally offer a sweeping grandeur dependent on their location; modern stock fencing can never compliment an empty landscape.

Communal husbandry is the way it's done with the Welsh mountain ponies in places like the Carneddau range; why can't the practice be extended to the ragged ruminants who inhabit the wild uplands? Perhaps hefting ( the evolved territorial instincts which Lakeland sheep such as Herdwicks apparently possess, keeping them within a defined grazing ground) hasn't evolved within Welsh upland breeds? Perhaps Herdwicks are a more laid back contented breed than their neurotic celtic cousins!

 I digress; Just beyond where the fence meets the bog, there it is. The ancient chapel although my impression is that it is actually a shrine not a chapel. Certainly something this remote and of this size would never have been used for communal worship but in a Christian context,might have been used for quiet solitary contemplation. A hermitage if you like but more likely just a simple shrine. Of course, as is the case with many Christian sites, it is quite likely that it would have originally been a pagan place.

As we know, the organised Christian church with the military precision of the Waffen SS attempted to obliterate the old belief systems of these islands and replace it with it's far more absurd brand of superstition. At least the original pagan beliefs were based on the natural world and our place in it. A place where a spring erupting from the earth can be seen and tasted in all it's natural glory and placed within a natural context which makes sense of the world we live in. In such a quiet and wild environment as the mountain of the black heights,it seems almost sacrilegious to attach an alien concept like Christianity to something that is  so much more ancient, visceral and so powerfully and intrinsically of this earth.

The Arthurian writer Scott Lloyd has interestingly located the birthplace of the figure whom King Arthur of legend was based on, just a few miles to the east in the village of Llanuwchllyn at the head of Llyn Tegid . According to Scott and his writing partner Steve Blake, whose extensive research resulted in the groundbreaking work 'The Keys to Avalon';  'Arthur' was a Welsh tribal leader who became one of the most powerful of all warlords in the Celtic badlands of the sixth century. Even more interestingly is the link between Arthur and the Montgomery born shaman Myrddyn who it is said is the Merlin of legend. Within The Keys to Avalon, it is striking just how powerful and significant the Afon Dyfrdwy  is within the Arthurian legend and indeed within Welsh culture. A holy river...a sacred river born in the black heights of the east before its journey to Avalon...situated  upon North Wales' western seaboard.

I spent no more than ten minutes wandering around the site. Before I departed I gazed up above the shrine to the impressive cantilever stone which jutted out high above from the mountain's flank like a stone diving board. I had first stood on that place thirty years previously and looked out upon a rolling brown moor.My vista stretching 15 miles or more with not a solitary human habitation or construction-save the coniferous forest- in sight. It is fair to say the mountain left it's imprint and I would keep returning to the mountain. In each of my ages...in each of the seasons.

After leaving the shrine I wandered under the face passing a remarkably large stone pen? and picked my way up the mountains' northern flank to eventually meet the snowline. It remained still and clear with the late January sun vanillarising the wispy clouds. Just beyond the western treeline Rhobell Fawr was caught momentarily under a stray cloud and looked grey and uninviting under a mantle of snow. In every direction, snow capped mountains broke through the sombre plain. Cader to the south; Arenig to the north, Aran to the east and the Rhinogs to the west. Fergus and I picked away down through the white fringes towards the forest band. Fingers of glazed rock pointed every which way to the brooding sky as unseen water courses bubbled and frothed beneath us.

A raven clapperclawed above before tumbling down to disappear from sight beyond a distant crag. Entering the dark forest we stumbled in the gloom over uprooted trees and skirted coal black peat bogs to eventually break onto the track.

Opposite where my car was parked the little gritstone-esque outcrop of Ffridd Craig Fach was drawn from a John Piper palette. All drizzled black and muted viridian green stains with ochre slashes and burnt umber shadows. Hard to believe that Harold Drasdo and I had come up here 15 years ago on a hot July day and recorded the first ever climb. A modest VS which I called Sentina.Later I would tell Mid Wales maestro Terry Taylor about the crag and he would add at least a dozen hard routes up to E5 and declare the rock 'the best in Wales'. I've added another three or four myself but I'm not sure if I've even recorded them ? Not that it matters. Modern climbers don't climb on these remote crags any more anyway.

We switchbacked down the steep road from the forest and out into the wide valley below the tree line. Ben Howard was on the car cd player singing something about

"walkin' back down this mountain
With the strength of a turnin' tide
Oh the wind's so soft on my skin,
The sun so hard upon my side.'

Except that the sun on my side was by now flaring behind Cader and the wind was locked out of my little cocoon as I pulled up to the Bala/ Dolgellau road and pointed the red bonnet east.

Words and images: John Appleby 2012