Helman Tor and Downderry Beach Feature in Boulder Britain

For quite some time I've been intending to put a review of Niall Grimes' outstanding Boulder Britain: The Essential Guide to British Bouldering on this blog. It's particularly relevant to South East Cornwall too, as Helman Tor and Downderry Beach are among the 180 venues which appear in this ambitious new guide. Boulder Britain is remarkable not only for its size – 448 pages of beautifully produced full colour – but its scope in being a selective guide to bouldering areas throughout the country.

While the coverage is by no means extensive for any particular area, accurate directions and a summary are given for a range of bouldering venues. A good selection of problems is included at each of the better crags. The book also helpfully directs the reader to sources of further information such as local bouldering guides and on-line topos. Although it is well designed and stuffed full of great photos, for me it is Grimes' humorous writing style that is the highlight of Boulder Britain. His frank, often highly amusing assessments of an area's qualities provide a perfect recommendation – or indeed condemnation – for the guidebook user to follow.

It is pleasing that Cornwall's bouldering gets such favourable coverage among Britain's more well-known areas and notable that this is due, in no small part, to some of the country's top boulderers. Mike Adams and Dan Varian both helped the author with the South West section generally, and Godrevy in particular, and seem to have a high regard for the region's merits.

I'm sure any boulderer or keen rock climber will find this book to be an invaluable travelling companion and it will no doubt help raise the profile of numerous under-rated bouldering spots throughout the country. It may also be of interest to mention that within a week of the pre-order copies of Boulder Britain becoming available (mid-December 2011) I was bumping into climbers out and about with it – a telling sign of how useful and much needed this guidebook is.

Boulder Britain: The Essential Guide to British Bouldering is published by Ape Index and is available from the usual outlets or via their website, www.apeindex.com, at a price of £25.00 – ISBN 978-0-9570578-0-7.