HISTORIC GUIDEBOOKS
We are pleased to make available to the climbing public, copies of our historic guidebooks which chronicle the development of rock climbing in Wales and Southern England.
Prior to our publication, in 1909, of a pocket guide describing all the recorded climbs on Lliwedd (then the most popular crag in Eryri owing to its alpine scale) there was no published source of route descriptions for any part of the UK. The details of climbs were passed by word-of-mouth amongst the small number of climbers who were active at that time. Our Lliwedd guidebook was the UK's, and very probably the World's first climbing guidebook. There were books about climbing such as OG Jones's Rock Climbing in the English Lake District but they didn't contain route descriptions, just essays about days out climbing. Interestingly the club initially resisted grading routes stating that 'no attempt has been made to grade the climbs in classes in accordance with their supposed difficulty. The mountaineer knows that technical "difficulty" is inextricably interwoven with an entirely distinct element of " danger." The estimate of " difficulty" among climbers varies largely with their physical conformation, just as their capacity to gauge "danger" fluctuates inevitably in accordance with their individual experience. Satisfactory classification, therefore, is impracticable, and its attempt only misleading'. This view didn't last long, the Ogwen guide of 1910 had grades!
Since that first volume we have published 106 other guides and supplements covering a diverse range of climbing areas including Eryri, Pembroke, the Bristol Area, Devon, Cornwall, Kent and Dorset. You can download copies of our historic twentieth century editions from this page. These books provide a remarkable record of climbs across most of Wales and the southern half of England and this record only exists because the club took on the responsibility for collecting, storing and making publically available the information; regardless of the publisher all modern guidebooks to the areas covered by CC guides are based on this record.
Click on a guidebook to download a copy.
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Copyright Notice
All material contained on this site, including digital copies of text and images from the Climbers' Club Guidebooks, is copyright and may not be reproduced.
Readers are encouraged to use it for their own research, under the ‘fair use’ provisions of international copyright legislation, but may not publish or redistribute it, either in print or in any kind of digital format.
Copyright of text and images within Climbers' Club Guidebooks is owned by the creator or creators and their permission is required for any further use. Please contact the Climbers' Club ([email protected]) if you wish to reproduce any information and we will liaise with the copyright holder.
The Climbers' Club hold the copyright for presentational aspects of the work, including layout and typography and their permission is also required for further reproduction of the pdfs.
The guidebooks series are:
- FIRST SERIES (1909-1926)
- SECOND SERIES (1936-1956) Edited by G R Speaker, Wilfrid Noyce & H E Kretschmer
- THIRD SERIES (1956-1962) Edited by Wilfrid Noyce
- FOURTH SERIES (1963-1974) Edited by John Neill, Nigel Rogers, Eric Byne, A. J. J. Moulam, Pete Hatton, Trevor Jones, Paul Nunn & R. C. White
- FIFTH SERIES (1975-1985) Edited by Bob Moulton & Geoff Milburn
- SIXTH SERIES (1987-1990) Edited by Dave Hope, Geoff Milburn & Bob Moulton
- SEVENTH SERIES (1991-2000) Edited by Ian Smith, John Willson, Bob Moulton & Geoff Milburn
- EIGHTH SERIES (2001-2004) Edited by Nigel Coe, John Willson & Bob Moulton
- NINTH SERIES (2006- current) Edited by John Willson, Nigel Coe, Gwyn Evans, Bob Moulton, Pete Sterling, Ian Smith, Paul Robertson & Helen Barry
