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| Fairy Steps, the climb RR refers to below. This is before he was involved with detaching and falling with the large flake. I think it is the one highlighted. |
Friday, 10 January 2025
ARTICLE: Allan Austin Obituary – A Prophet of Purism
https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/allan_austin_obituary__a_prophet_of_purism-16128
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Thanks for this morning's read. An excellent article.
ReplyDeleteI never saw him climb, did you in your Bradford days?
Dave Miller told me he had done routes with him and Brian Evans..
BC - I have a tenuous connection. My older brother Rod's best friend was Richard Ruffe, brother of Alan's wife Jennifer Ruffe. Also Their younger brother, Philip Ruffe was in my form at Bradford Grammar School as well as Peter Clough, younger brother of Ian Clough. I did climb on Baildon Bank a couple of times with Philip and Peter, but I never had any climbing connection with Alan. Richard, my brother's pal was a highly qualified electrical engineer working on top secret missile and underwater guidance systems. He also had a phenomenal knowledge and love of classical music at both appreciation and technical levels. He was a very great lifelong friend to my brother and one of the few people who had a strong influence on him. Sadly Richard died from MND about fifteen years ago. At Richard's funeral I sat on a table at the reception afterwards with Alan and Philip.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I think it was in 1969, I went on a snow and ice course in Glencoe run by Ian Clough and Hamish Mc Innes. Ian was one of the kindest and ,most considerate people I have met during my life. Hamish had little patience with those trying to learn.
ReplyDeleteAllan not Alan.
ReplyDeleteAnd one for you in return.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/sport/ng-interactive/2024/dec/18/king-of-the-fells-joss-naylor-the-shepherd-with-an-unbeatable-running-record?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
It would need a gallon of chutzpah (taken orally) for me to get away with convincingly claiming I was Allan Austin's climbing contemporary, yet there's a pork scratching of truth to that unlikely statement. He and I were virtually the same age, we both came from Bradford, I also climbed at Almscliffe and Ilkley, and (based on detail in the quoted article) it seems we shared some of the wayward characteristics of men who had the misfortune to have grown up in the WW2-affected West Riding. Beyond that we are as chalk and cheese. Nah, the comparison isn't extreme enough. How about pasteurised milk and Laphroiag (an Islay-based malt for those who don't get out much)?
ReplyDeleteI read books about climbing, thought it seemed a very daring thing to do, had the unparalleled good luck to be sent on a month-long course at the Outward Mountain School, paid for by my then employer, Bradford's Telegraph and Argus, and for a short period I faffed around on gritstone V-Diffs. The high spot of my climbing career was when I re-climbed Fairy Steps (The Quarry, Ilkley) - unroped - detached a huge flake of rock near the top and fell as a rock-Robinson-rock sandwich into a narrow fissure at the start of the next climb to the right. As to being a climber I was, as West Riding people put it, "a right clawpoke."
Meanwhile, Allan Austin did all the magical things listed in the obituary quoted here. I knew of him distantly, as I might have someone who introduced ballroom dancing on Mars. Another remote world, entirely. Highly skilled
I met him twice: once at his brother-in-law's funeral, another time at Ilkley or Almscliffe I can't be sure. He was walking with the aid of a stick for reasons unexplained. One important detail: he was wearing well-polished, black, lace-up shoes. Shoes he could well have worn for ballroom dancing.
He smiled gently at those who passed. Glanced at those disporting themselves on the rock faces. Looked philosophical. I seem to recall there was some chat which I was unable to overhear. Next thing he had climbed the first three moves - on virtually nonexistent holds - of what I presumed was a route of little evidence.
In those shoes!
Then he reversed the moves and re--adopted tranquillity. I thought: now there's a climber.
Should be Outward Bound...
ReplyDeleteRR - Thanks for that. I have now included a photo of Fairy Steps before you were involved in the climb's transformation.
ReplyDelete