Sandstone South East England
by David Atchison-Jones, Jingo Wobbly Euro-Guides,  £17.95

It has taken me a few weeks to decide whether or not to write this review. But finally when I became skint, having spent near on £18 on the book, and was unable to put petrol in my car to go to the crag, I had enough time on my hands.

So back in July 2000 we were climbing at High rocks. We had been watching this guy with his tripod and pad drawing and measuring the crag, Eventually he came towards the climb we were on, Roofus on the hut boulder. It turned out to be David  Atchison-Jones doing the drawings for the new southern sandstone guide book.

We discovered it was going to be a topo guide, without any sort of text description, with the hardest moves marked on each line. This sounded like a good idea. Then he went on to tell us about how many of the grades were going to be changed. For this he was introducing a + and - to each grade, okay. Although maybe a switch to french grades would have been a better idea, the climbs are bolted anyway. The next thing he said sounded a little odd, he said that there were too many 5c climbs, so some are going to be moved down to 5c- or 5b, others up to 5c+ and 6a. We thought that if a climb was 5c then it is 5c. But he seemed to think that there should be an equal distribution of climbs across the grades. We could not work out if this was serious or not. But overall, after the we thought it sounded like a good idea.

Now, having skimmed through the book let friends read it and give opinions, I have decided that it really should have spent a little longer on the drawing board. It is all good and well to have a line marking the route, with the density of climbs on southern sandstone it really is useful. This was the case with Dave Turners 1989 guide, and why the 1995 guide fell a little short of its predecessor. But this one takes it a little too far.

• Do you really need to know that 'honeycomb' has pockets? The name is a good indication. Also if you cannot see them from the bottom, you must either have your head up your arse, or be more blind than a bat.
• The British technical grade is for the single hardest move on a pitch. Thus on a 6a the one hard move should be 6a, does it matter where it is, and do you want to be told? Maybe, if it is a long concealed multi pitch climb, but for god sake they are only 30 feet high, and it is almost always possible to make an educated guess.
• The other info, ie. the angle, chimney move, layback, etc... Are they useful? Are they not totally evident from the base? You might need this if the route you want has a long difficult walk in, and you really want a lot of beta to know if it is worth while. But all sandstone crags are by roads and not that big. Why not just walk to the climb and have a look?
• Something more useful than the type of holds, which is usually self evident, would be where to set up the anchor at the top. This would be especially useful at areas other than bowles and harrisons, and  would go a long way to helping the crags.

Another complaint I have with this book is how it is made. It is a paperback, thus not very durable. I have taken it to the crag once and already it is slightly torn, it did not even come out of the bag. It is 336 pages, with over 44 of them with adverts on, and this guide is still £5 more than the climbers club guide, which is hardback, has no adverts, and includes all the sandstone crags. Admittedly it does have a lot of pictures, but quite a few of them seem like a waste of space. On page 65 there is a picture of Left Circle, but the climber still has a foot on the ground. That is not a climbing picture, but a standing picture. The climbing pictures are good, in that they are bright, well composed, and usually convey some sort of feeling.

Having said all this I was still not totally annoyed with having bought this book. Then I started to look through it seeing how some of the grades have changed. Almost every climb I looked up had some sort of mistake. For example Coathanger at bowles, is it the imaginary grade 5b+ or 5c? Then I looked at Sandman, 6a+ in the description but it appears in the 6b+ graded list? So I went through the Harrison's section looking for various inconsistencies. Out of 31 climbs that have repeat descriptions, 20 of them were inconsistent. That was not including all the info like original grade, type of move, etc.... This list does also not go into the large number of climbs that appear under the wrong grades in the graded list.

As well as all those there were other things that did not fit. For instance on page 114 the diagram has a route marked 1a. There is no description that I could find for this line.

There are some redeeming features. Most notable has to be the couple of pages at the front dedicated to the correct use of the crags. Here the pictures are invaluable, showing how the anchors should be used. Some people never seem to get that the rock is fragile. So many times I have seen people climb crack route on the hut boulder at high rocks, placing cams behind the flake and in the break. Occasional intervention nearly always ends up with me setting up their rope and down climbing. Also he has done a good job in finding out about the first ascentionist and first solos, although with Bulging Bloody Bonanza for example being given two different descriptions it does raise the point as to whether or not any of this info is purely made up? Also with some climbs having there names changed and others being named when previously they just had a grade is kinda annoying.

As much as I would like to like this book, it is just too expensive for what it is, and the number of inconsistencies makes me consider how accurate the rest of the info is. When the 95 guide came out, I was disappointed to see that most of the superb drawings had been discarded. Thus I continued to use my 89 guide. The combination of both the 95 and 01 guides would be very good, but also way, way too expensive, and bulky. Not even remotely pocket sized. The only reason to get this guide over the CC guide is if you cannot understand english, thus as a euro guide it has a niche. It is just a pity the price is too high and the information conflicting.