Book reviews Roly Smith
Quest into the Unknown: My
Life as a Climbing Nomad
Tony Howard
Vertebrate Publishing, £14.95 (pb)
F
or a man who has lived in the
same Chew Valley village for
all his 70-odd years, Tony
Howard has probably explored more
parts of the untrodden world than
anyone else in history.
Coming from the same
adventurous tradition as Eric
Shipton, Bill Tilman and Wilfred
Thesiger, long-time Guild member
Tony Howard is indisputably one of
the world’s greatest explorers. His
maxim, repeated several times in
this enthralling account of his long
and exciting life, sums it up: “You
never know unless you go.”
Howard is probably best
known in the climbing world
as a founding partner of Troll
Climbing Equipment, designing
and producing the first commercial
range of nuts, the first climbing sit
harness and the first sewn slings.
His many climbing achievements
include the epic first ascent of
the 1,000-foot eponymous Troll
Wall in Romsdal, Norway in 1965,
recounted 46 years later in his Troll
Wall.
14 Outdoor focus | summer 2019
But it is as an explorer of the
world’s wildest places that Howard
is best known. This weighty, 420-
page tome faithfully records his
explorations of, among others,
Norway, Greenland, Canada,
India, Oman, Morocco, Jordan and
Palestine. He was instrumental in
creating the Jordan Trail, a 400-
mile long-distance route from Umm
Qais in the north to the coastal city
of Aqaba in the south.
And he and his faithful
companion Di will always be most
closely associated with opening
up the desert peaks of Jordan,
particularly Wadi Rum, memorably
described by TE Lawrence as
“magnificent…vast, echoing and
God-like.” It was a viewing of David
Lean’s classic 1962 movie Lawrence
of Arabia that first introduced Tony
and Di to that awesome and then
hardly-visited location.
And it is among the “vast,
echoing” ramparts of Wadi Rum
where Howard’s heart still lies. In a
memorable account of his first visit,
the author describes: “…massive
red, wind-weathered, weirdly
shaped cliffs jutting up from orange
sands beneath an incomparably blue
sky.”
To quote Lawrence again, “All
men dream, but not equally. …the
dreamers of the day are dangerous
men, for they may act on their
dreams with open eyes, to make
them possible.”
Tony Howard certainly qualifies
as a dreamer of the day.
The South Yorkshire Moors
Christopher Goddard
Gritstone Publishing, £12.99 (pb)
T
his hand-drawn guide to
walking and exploring
the Dark Peak moors west
of Sheffield produced by the
Gritstone Publishing co-operative
is unfortunately titled. The vast
majority of the 21 walks described
are actually quite comfortably
within the borders of Derbyshire.
Clearly influenced by his
upbringing in Sheffield, the author
admits to his bias, and says he
does not mean to disparage the
“wonderful and varied” county of
Derbyshire. He advises the reader
to read the book as not just South
Yorkshire, but as South Yorkshire
and parts of north Derbyshire.
The confusion over the title
shouldn’t distract from what I
believe is one of the best hand-
crafted walking guides to the Dark
Peak since Mark Richards’ High Peak
Walks for Cicerone back in 1982.
It follows the format of the
author’s previous successful guides
to The West Yorkshire Moors and
The West Yorkshire Woods, with
detailed, colour-washed sketches
and extensive and well-researched
notes on geology, wildlife and
human history. The routes range
from Dunford Bridge in the north to
the Chatsworth Moors in the south,
and are described in 150 packed
pages.
Although quite difficult to read
because of the single-column
setting, the introductory sections on
geology and history are fascinating.
Particularly interesting are the
essay on trespass and access and
the account of the Mass Trespass in
1932. This reveals that GHB Ward,
“King of the Clarion Ramblers”
(to whom the trespass is often still