Weekend in Portland

KCLMC Portland Trip Report:

As drunken revellers slowly filtered their way out of the Union, the hardy KCLMCers waited patiently, roll mats, sleeping bags and gear in-hand looking perfectly out of place amongst the Friday night crowd. As the full ‘Freshers Trip Vol.1’ contingent slowly arrived to meet outside the union it soon became apparent that there were too many climbers and not enough cars to transport them. As the minutes ticked by and our ETA edged closer to Saturday morning and away from Friday night it became apparent that someone was going to have to schlep to Brockley to meet up with the fourth car that we had previously deemed surplus to requirements.  Everyone being suitably ‘brassic’ (those who are au fait with their cockney rhyming slang and enthusiastic foodies will notice the complex wordplay on display there…) there were no immediate volunteers. As loose change was slowly collected for the intrepid Sally to make the eventual bus journey others managed, through a mixture of engineering brilliance, brute force and resignation to the fate of an uncomfortable ride, forge an extra seat in one of the cars. The journey to Brockley had been spared and we were finally on our way, albeit with some awkwardly placed roll mats and helmets!

                

As midnight edged ever closer the bright lights of Weymouth slowly appeared below us as we edged our down the A354, the spectacular sight of the Fleet lagoon gently illuminated by the lights of the town. We passed along the only road onto the Island (Wikipedia tells me it is an Island and not a Peninsula) and the lights slowly faded behind us as we pulled into the youth hostel garden at just gone midnight.

Portland Stone in its urban incarnation at Senate House.

Up bright (ish) and early (ish) the next morning we ate a relaxed breakfast of cereal and coffee in the cool crisp sea air, looking back over the view of Chesil Beach and the Fleet that the previous night’s darkness had denied us. As the hot water dwindled, we slowly made our way in convoy towards our first crag of the trip, The Cuttings, eager for our first taste of the indomitable rock that has bought us St Paul’s Cathedral, Somerset House the University of London’s own Senate House (right). 

                

The Cuttings lent themselves perfectly to our purposes with short (less than 5 metres) and easy (f2 to f3+) routes for beginners to practice the basics of leading outdoors in a relatively comfortable area alongside, with everyone attempting at least one lead, regardless of prior experience.

Whilst most routes were undoubtedly heavily polished, hindering the enjoyment of some of the more popular routes, the area proved to have a little something for everyone, including a very exciting Top 50 4+ route. Aptly named, ‘Jam’, it consisted mainly of a beautiful crack scoring its way across two thirds of the route. The crack was wide enough to be either jammed or for appropriate holds to be located inside and was skilfully led and top-roped by many as the day wore on.

                Just to the right of this was another great and gentle two-star route called Family Day Out (f4+)which was led and top-roped by a large group of us just as the sun was about to set. It provided beautiful views out over the English Channel, the orange hue of the sun glinting delightfully off the surface to indicate the end of a successful days climb. Here I am taking in the sights at the top of Family Day Out:

Deciding we were in need of a little liquid refreshment and, with darkness quickly descending and heavy winds gusting  violently over Chesil Beach, we headed for the beachside Cove House Inn. Still in our climbing clothes we supped a delightful selection of local ales (including the frighteningly titled Jurassic, named clearly after the coast we currently resided on and nothing to do with Jeff Goldblum being rudely interrupted by a T-Rex) and brand-name lagers whilst discussing the days climbing between bouts of cold wind provided by the coming and going of patrons via the door by which we inconveniently placed ourselves next to!  

After a beautifully cooked chilli con carne at the Youth Hostel we retreated to what we assumed would be a cosy campfire that, despite a tremendous and pretty orange glow, just didn’t provide ample heat for us all. We all retired in the early hours before facing our final day on the rock.

Blacknor South looking spectacular

Whilst the Cuttings were pretty enough, nothing could prepare us for the spectacular views of Blacknor South. A tricky hike in via some pre-roped scrambles proved worth it as we settled our gear down on a narrow path high above to crashing waves below. The climbs were, again, of mixed ability, with the delightfully named Hot Pants Explosion providing a hardy challenge for the more experienced climbers in the form of a f6b+. Feeling weary and revelling in some glorious late October sunshine, no one was feeling particularly up for anything too taxing and the gentle climbs of Do Ixtlan (f4+) (with a perplexing final move that had me hovering on a tiny foothold for what must have been a good fifteen minutes) and Well Done Poppet (f5) providing most of the morning’s entertainment.

However, in keeping with the relaxed theme of the day, the weekends highlight was to reveal itself in the form of another Top 50 climb, this time graded a seemingly paltry f3. But to dismiss this route on the basis of its seemingly easy grade is to make a grave mistake. Seasoned veterans and freshers alike all agreed that this was a truly spectacular route. Hugging an exposed arête all the way up with only the unbreakable blue of the English Channel in the background one truly feels they are on the edge of the world when doing this climb. Whilst not a technical challenge the route feels very exposed and there are a couple of fluttery moves near the middle. It also happened to be a badass photo opp! Some of the best are located below (photo credits to Nicholas Chee)

Pierre Conquering the Fallen Slab Arete 

Due to everyone’s desire to conquer the arête we, again, didn’t leave till nearly 7pm, ensuring a late arrival back in London. Slowly the KCLMC contingent dispersed their way into a quiet London night to sleep off the past two day’s endurances, reflecting on a weekend that might not have been high on technical difficulty but was certainly a weekend for spectacular climbs in what was surely to be the last of this year’s sunshine.   

My attempt at the Arete 

On the final day, perfecting our 'old-school-serious-climber-face' picture

The Men Who Made Us Fat (That Aren't Us)...

Its been a while since my first post. Mainly because I still find blogging self-indulgent and don't really believe that anyone gives a shit about what I say. BUT I did feel compelled to add my two-cents on a good, but misleading BBC documentary I watched on Iplayer this evening. If you watched it too I'd be keen to hear what you think.

Now don’t get me wrong the food industry has a lot to answer for, especially in relation to misleading advertising re: health food. This BBC documentary, whilst highlighting many of these issues, is guilty of the very nutritional naivety that these companies have profited from. Misleading claims about what is healthy and unhealthy and confusion about some basic points of nutrition somewhat weakens the BBC’s position on these issues.

Lets start with the Negatives:

Dorset Cereals, complete with its
"misleading" label
consisting of nothing but
the actual ingredients
in the package. Bastards!

In the first five minutes we are told how organic cereal, Prêt salads and yoghurt snacks are “more fattening” than Weetabix, a Big Mac and a Krispy Kreme donut respectively. Consumer “expert” Giles Quick is rolled out to give his opinion on a range of so-called “health” products. Why someone from a consumer intelligence agency is being touted as some sort of nutritional expert is beyond me, but we are inflicted to is ill-informed wisdom as if it were gospel.  

First under investigation is a honey granola cereal (hardly the healthiest cereal anyway) which had the audacity to list the actual ingredients on the front cover (“all of these ingredients sound pretty healthy, don’t they?” he notes smugly. Yes, Giles, because they are!) He then tries to claim that its high presence of saturated fat made it a “fattening” product! What kind of pseudo-science babble is that?! A product is only “fattening” if you eat too much of it, the presence of fat does NOT make it fattening. It is plainly obvious that the fat comes from all the nuts and seeds in the cereal, the same nuts and seeds that are low GI, high in Omega 3’s and almost all the essential fatty acids most people are so lacking in!

Yes, if you ate bowl after bowl of it you will get fat but you would get fat if you ate 5000 calories worth of carrots a day. Fat does not equal fattening! 

Is the BBC really trying to claim a Big Mac
is "healthier" than a Pret Salad?
It might have fewer calories
but not all calories are created equal

We are then shown that a prêt salad has more calories than a Big Mac. This may be true but to suggest that the Big Mac (the same Big Mac that NEVER DECAYS due to all the artificial preservatives) is healthier than a Rocket and Lentil salad is plain madness! Yes it has more calories but that only becomes a problem if you eat too many calories over the course of an entire day; not a single 500-calorie meal! A rocket salad is packed with nutrients whilst a Big Mac is a nutritionally void frankenfood! Plus who eats a Big Mac on its own? They come with fries and a sugary drink which ramps the calories way past that of the Pret Salad!

The summary of all this pseudo-science waffle is that just because something has fat or calories it is unhealthy. WRONG! All calories are NOT created equal, the calories in a prêt salad are better for you than the calories in a Big Mac. You will only get fat if you eat too many of them!

 ...And now the Positives 

The program did go on to make a lot of good points and rightly held the “health” food industry to account on a variety of matters, including the ludicrous claim by companies like P&G that market their juices as “fruit juice” despite containing as little as 5% juice 

Another interesting segment was with Harvard Business professor Pierre Chandon (again not a nutritional expert). He told us of his study comparing consumer perception of a foot-long Subway sandwich with that oft-cited nemesis the Big Mac, the former marketed as healthy and the latter with a reputation as fast-track heart attack. 

Now my first reaction to this was, “who in their right mind would think a foot-long Subway was a healthy food?” but that is beside the point. The point of the study was that people did think a Footlong subway contained fewer calories than a Big Mac and that was due to misleading marketing. People are so fixated on the idea that “low-fat” means “unfattening” or “healthy” that anything marketed thus is seen as healthy. People think in dichotomies of Healthy or Un-healthy. Food companies have realised this and realised that just one “health” claim is enough to trick consumers into thinking food is healthy. This is a serious issue and the BBC does a good job of highlighting this.

Throughout the show, I kept wanting to answer the question of "who made us fat?" with "us and our own stupidity"; anyone who eats a footlong subway thinking they are on the fast-track to skinny town needs their head examined! This was only confounded by the BBC making so many basic nutritional errors with regards to "fat content" and "fattening". This assumption would be misplaced, however. Food marketing is so incessant and pervasive that those who don't have the time to look up the difference between mono and polyunsaturated fats or LDL and HDL cholesterol will believe the crap these companies lie about and they need to be held to account....fast! Unfortunately amateurish documentaries like this one only highlight the pervasiveness of the "health food" myth by making so many of the basic mistakes that the consumers they are trying to protect are being duped into! 

First Blog Post

Jack Lalanne telling it like it is forty years ago. Each word still rings true today! I urge you all to watch :) 

Rather an unimaginative title for my first blog post but I'm still only tentatively dipping my toes into this so-called "blogging". I'm sure they'll get better soon

I intend over the coming posts to talk about three of the things that take up a lot of my time. Unsurprisingly those three things are Eating, Running and Climbing. A broad-brush group of topics that I'm sure will widen considerably as the posts go on. 


For today I wanted to talk about this video from recently deceased US fitness king Jack Lalanne. Now, not many of us in the UK will have heard of him unless any of us have had the propensity or desire to call a "star jump" a "jumping jack". That will be his transatlantic influence! 


Anyway,  I was struck about how relevant his words seem some 40 years after this video was made. The way he describes the miserable, downtrodden faces of those on his local "streetcar" despite all their "modern conveniences" that, by all accounts, would seem downright archaic to us is strikingly relevant to anyone who has ever had to endure a rush-hour tube. 


"People have gotten so far away from the way they should be living  that they've lost the ability to be happy anymore" laments Jack. Could there be a better way to sum up the general malaise with which people tend to live their lives now? People wait endlessly for the next paycheck, the next gadget, the next quick fix and, dammit, they've been waiting for nigh on 40 years and not a damn thing has changed!!! 


Now, whilst I admire Jack and his many achievements (including working out 7 days a week until the very day he died at the tender age of 97) there are a few things I disagree with him about such as his mantra of "If it tastes good, spit it out!". Ugh, I could not think of a more miserable existence than one that involves solely bland food designed for sustenance and nutrition only. In a way I think this mantra stems only from the culture that Jack fought so hard to bring down. If fast food companies hadn't pumped their food with addictive additives that create desires that can only be satiated by further consumption of the very same additives and describe it as a "great taste" there would be no need to spit out tasty food!! If it tastes "good" for these reasons then by all means spit it out! If it tastes good because it has been cooked from scratch and flavoured with natural herbs, spices, sweeteners (such as honey, fruit, agave...) then devour away!! 


So I guess thats why I wanted to write about my aforementioned topics. I am a firm believer that a good diet and a modicum of exercise can alleviate all but the most deep-seated depressions (excluding, of course, medically diagnosed depression) and so would most people who blog/write/about food or exercise but I do believe there is still a culture that deems the two spheres quite separate. 


The fitness and exercise community tend to advocate healthy eating (naturally) but eating that is designed at sustenance to fuel a workout and not fuel our tastebuds. No carbs after seven? No thanks!!


And whilst the food community of the Jamie Oliver ilk (of which I would not be ashamed to align myself with) pay the natural lipserivce to getting fit and healthy alongside eating well it never goes beyond the occasional government-led 30 minutes, three days a week mantra. 


There is a real lack of committed foodies AND fitness fanatics....at least not ones that write about it! I'll probably be too busy climbing or running to ever experiment with Soux-Vide beef and too enthusiastic about baking (and eating with jam and butter) my own bread to ever get a washboard stomach and I'm sure there is a whole community of people out there who feel just the same and THEY are probably too busy to blog about it!! Lets see he how it goes!!