Quote from: Greg C on January 25, 2008, 08:35:29 amThis is a great photo but the sky looks photoshopped, is it? get a grip man.
This is a great photo but the sky looks photoshopped, is it?
My copy dropped through the letterbox this morning. The first thing that struck me is the lines on the topo are not curves, but a series of straicht lines. I don't like the look of that very much, curves are far neater.I'll have a proper look and post more later.
yorkshire really needed a new guide.. but not this one..
There's no way I'm touchin' it, Gaylord!Oh! You mean touche?(sorry )
I hopefully packed it so it didn't get damaged
pedant
I must admit that I'm disappointed by the new guide too; both in terms of its basic planning and layout, and by its execution. The timeline is as pointless a waste of paper as I have ever seen, possibly only included for the sake of a weak joke about Thatcherism. That it is included rather than a problem index seems bizarre, especially given the otherwise slavish devotion to the style of Ru's guide. And, whilst I accept that any selective guide cannot by definition include everything, there do seem to be some perverse omissions. For instance, the absence of a proper eliminates diagram for the Calf at Ilkley seems particularly strange given its place in Yorkshire climbing history and its status as pretty much the only weatherproof venue in the county. It just seems such a missed opportunity, I suspect I am not alone in the number of drizzly days spent under those 30 degrees of desperation, with old YGB guide in hand, trying to link numbered holds and muttering "surely that's a misprint?". Similarly, but to a lesser extent, the lack of Crucifix (Almscliff) and Clingen Face (Woodhouse) eliminates is a bit of a surprise. I admit my opinions on the above, and matters such as the crags included (West Vale rather than Crookrise etc) can be discounted as subjective matters of personal style. However, what is definitely less open to a differing interpretation is the tremendously inept execution. An preliminary scan has revealed several examples of problem descriptions and topo lines being mixed up / missing, e.g. on the Seventh Wave at Widdop, or with Rageh Omar / Under Rumsfeild (sic) at Whitehouses. The lines on the topos are ugly and look like they have been clumsily drawn on with the free drawing package in Word. The number and frequency of spelling mistakes is utterly appalling and frankly insulting to the purchaser. Reading the guide in a bad mood induced a mental sensation akin to reading a beloved novel rendered into teenage "txt spk" whilst listening to someone scratch a nail down a blackboard. For pity's sake how difficult would it have been to get a few friends to proof read the initial drafts? It is not as though most of the mistakes would have required any specialist knowledge to identify, just a remedial ability to read English and perhaps match numbers in the descriptions to those in the diagrams. Perhaps too much time was spent agonising about the grades of barely climbed "test-pieces" and too little spent performing basic duties to the reader. Far more professionalism is on display in the free topos at Lakesbloc, yorkshiregrit, and in some posts to these forums (e.g. the Churnet thread, some Woodhouse Scar stuff I recently received). I feel more sad than angry though, a lot of hard work has obviously gone into it, the are some nice photos and I look forward to using it to plan future days out, but the overall impression has been poisoned by avoidable clumsiness.Hey ho.. the guide has done something though. Lots of photos of problems, even if the material around them is suspect, has finally got me feeling a post-Christmas inclination to leave my Leeds Wall comfort zone, brave the hideous weather, and do some cranking. Worth it for that I guess, especially if I get a few good days at crags I have not yet visited (Scout Crag, Dove Stones etc). Although when I do venture out, chances are that most often it'll be with my tattered old YGB guide, held together with Duck Tape and covered in annotations from the yorkshiregrit site.
i'm actually surprised bank's problem start to the left arete at whitehouses was left out, looked pretty good to me.