Originally published November 1, 2008
Almscliff Crag in North Yorkshire, England, is an outcrop or tor of gritstone, visible for many miles around. It is a site of special scientific interest – a protected site under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981 and a venue for climbers who boulder on it and walkers who want to look around the area from a high vantage point.
Bouldering is a branch of climbing concentrating on difficult technical problems, often just a few feet off the ground. Gritstone is a hard rock and, not surprisingly, feels very gritty and rough to the touch, and provides very good friction for climbing.
For the climbers who come to do some bouldering, Almscliff is within easy reach of Harrogate, and quite near the road, so dragging a crash mat up from the car is not hard. A crash mat is a kind of portable mattress onto which a climber can jump down to avoid landing on hard or stony ground.
Yorkshire gritstone is also called millstone grit because it was used for making millstones for grinding wheat. Whilst millstone grit is a hard rock, the grit must surely have rubbed off and become mixed with the wheat. Certainly, from time to time a stone would have to be dressed, which involved cutting fresh furrows in the stone where they had worn down rubbing against the opposing stone.
Walking around the base of the outcrop on a bright October day, cow pats dotted the grass. We could imagine cows wandering around the base of the rocks high above the surrounding countryside.