[Will Hunt]

Had a go on this today and got my hand in the big break near the top but failed to hang it 

Its definitely not Syrett's Saunter as it wasn't immensely hard. Didn't use the arete at all though, purely on the pebbles, microedges and smears to the right of this wall. Is this named or is it purely eliminate for not using the arete?
What grade does it go at? I was thinking along the lines of V4/V5.

[Johnny Brown]

Aye, remember this as the easy alternative to Syrett's. Its nice, but like you say, a bit contrived.
Grade sounds rightish. Not been for a while mind, Syrett's got any harder?

Just had a look at yorkshire-grit, and the new guide. Bizarrely, Syrett's isn't on yorks-grit, though there is a thing called pebble wall at 7c. However the photo clearly shows a guy on the thing you descibe, which sure ain't 7c:



In the new guide, the line of Syrett's is down as similar to yours, despite being described as

Brutal pebble pulling up the centre of the slab. Harder, now that a hold has fallen off - 7b

 and then a unnamed 7c to the left. The photo is from the side though so perspective has compressed things a bit. Its also spelt Syrret's, I can't find the YMC guide but I think our spelling is correct.

So no clearer from the two main bibles. Here's how I always had it -

Syrett's goes up the centre of the slab, as the guide describes. Its been a few years since I did it regularly but I'd give this a good 7b+ - harder than it was originally due to loss of pebbles I was assured by locals. The starting feet were always fairly obvious in the centre of the slab.
 
Then there is an easier variation on the right as you've described (but inferior as it becomes either the arete or a bit contrived as above - 7aish) and a harder one just to the left (which is really hard and may have been affected by the pebble losses on Syrett's - 7c seems fair, maybe 7c+). All were dirty and scary by the time you got to the break.

I guess it could only take the loss of one pebble and the centre line could have become defunct, leaving the two sides as the probs - who knows this may have happened. Last time I did it was march 05, i think.

[Will Hunt]

Cheers for that. Must go back and finish it off. Really was my kind of thing. Nice n thin 

[Stubbs]

The good (for a slab) right foothold at the start of Syrett's was knocked off last year or the year before, so it's even harder than it was with the lost pebbles.

[uptown]

So no clearer from the two main bibles.
Last time I did it was march 05, i think.

You should write a guidebook JB - three years away and you're still closest to the mark!

[Control freak]

Just had a look at yorkshire-grit, and the new guide. Bizarrely, Syrett's isn't on yorks-grit, though there is a thing called pebble wall at 7c. However the photo clearly shows a guy on the thing you descibe, which sure ain't 7c:

AKAIK Syretts Saunter was always known as pebble wall before the last guide came out and gave a few new names to established problems

[hongkongstuey]

AKAIK Syretts Saunter was always known as pebble wall before the last guide came out and gave a few new names to established problems

it was called Pebble Wall when I used to live in Leeds (about 10-years back) - quality little problem whatever name you give it

[Will Hunt]

Thought Id put up another photo of the problem.


Its a me.

[Houdini]

And once more Will . . .

[Will Hunt]

 

Houdini, sometimes you confuse me.

[Houdini]

I can't see the picture just the usual red cross on white square - is it just me?  ???

[Will Hunt]

Bollocks. Got it off a mates blog. Will sort this out.

That should do it. Any better?

[SA Chris]

I can see it fine.

[uptown]

Just had a look at yorkshire-grit, and the new guide. Bizarrely, Syrett's isn't on yorks-grit, though there is a thing called pebble wall at 7c. However the photo clearly shows a guy on the thing you descibe, which sure ain't 7c:

AKAIK Syretts Saunter was always known as pebble wall before the last guide came out and gave a few new names to established problems

I've always known it as Syrett's saunter - Dave Musgrove (he of much Yorkshire knowledge) calls it this in the route book from 1998 with a mention of 'aka Pebble wall and Impossible wall'. I prefer the first name if spelt correctly - it gives a sense of history and is much more informative than the purely descriptive names. Does anyone know why this was ever called Syrett's saunter in the first place though? -  I thought it was first climbed by Al Manson back in the 70s - I reckon it's a climb deserving to have been included in the total climbing history timeline in the new guide. And I'm sure it's harder than 7b - Adam is closer to the mark than either of the bibles or YG...

Never done the thing to the right though.

[webbo]

with regard to the names of various caley roadside problems the story is thus when the  guide writer decided they were going in to the guide.he asked al manson who'd done most of the first ascents at that time what they were called.as he hadn't named any of them he decided to embarrass his friends.therefore syretts saunter,bobs bastard[named after bob berzins] websters whinge[named after some fat old cunt living in east yorkshire]and so on.

[jern]

Just had a look at yorkshire-grit, and the new guide. Bizarrely, Syrett's isn't on yorks-grit, though there is a thing called pebble wall at 7c. However the photo clearly shows a guy on the thing you descibe, which sure ain't 7c:

AKAIK Syretts Saunter was always known as pebble wall before the last guide came out and gave a few new names to established problems

I've always known it as Syrett's saunter

There was a picture in an old (late 80s?) Leeds Uni MC journal of someone (JOe Healey I think) on a problem labelled 'Syretts Saunter' which was obviously on this slab. Its a weird picture as I remember (lost the journal years ago) because it looks as if he's traversing the slab.

The problem Will is talking about is one I was shown by a shy (non)Yorkshireman as being an easier sequence for Pebble wall / Impossible wall / Syrett's etc. In the end I did the  proper way and topped it out (you have to top out for the tick!) This was about 12 years ago, last tried it about 3 years ago and it didn't seem any different in terms of pebbles and whatever - may have lost some since though. God I wish I lived in Leeds still!

[nathan wind]

Did the central line, which at the time people used to call syrett's saunter, a long time ago... (though dropped off at the break) was back there the other day showing someone round and was shocked by how green and dirty  it was.. only to realize a huge beech tree had grown where there once was nothing.. hence the green and dirt I guess.. also it looked as though a key rh pebble (bout the size of a football boot stud) had come off a few inches beneath the break.. that pebble was key for me so would imagine this'd be full value for 7b now.. most likely 7b+.. used to get V9 in the steve rhodes guidebook.. for any of you ancient enough to remember that, that is... really should go back an re-aquaint myself....

[jern]

Weirdly enough I was looking through that guide last night. THAT, my friend, was a bouldering guide! The 'bed' system of quality rating being especially revolutionary.

[nathan wind]

THAT, my friend, was a bouldering guide! The 'bed' system of quality rating being especially revolutionary.

hell yeah!! forgotten about the bed rating system, pure class!

[nathan wind]

Just had a quick look at THAT guide to get a description of the problem on the lh side of this bloc. described thus..

'wall above the boulder trending R to, then up the arete' 6b 6..

obviously not v6, most likely somewhere in the F6B / 6B+ region at a guess? anyway a really cool problem, though not in the new guide, probably pretty dirty these days..

[jern]

That is a good problem, definitely not V6 (or whatever). I think it might be on the last Yorkshire Grit guide as route.

[SA Chris]

The Steve Rhodes Guide was the bible for a few years. Wandering Caley with beermat at the ready. HK Stu's brother found the copy in the Otley Bookshop.

[cofe]

reckon kim is taking a more direct/central line which is where i thought it went:



talk amongst yourselves.

[Jim]

get with the program cofe

[cofe]

don't make me F you up. I was being nothing short of helpful. you are going to feel my wrath. big time.

[Kim]

also it looked as though a key rh pebble (bout the size of a football boot stud) had come off a few inches beneath the break.. that pebble was key for me so would imagine this'd be full value for 7b now..

Aha, I remember using that one too! And not long after I did it (2001ish I think) Jordan snapped a left-hand one off lower down (though leaving an equally useful dink), so it's definately lost a few... the videos on yorkshire grit are on the money for the line, not the photo.

[Will Hunt]

Bloody strong lads, eh? Pulling off the crucial holds with their massive guns so that us weaklings have to try harder.
 

[Jim]

I want to get it on the record that I have never broken any holds off this problem

[Will Hunt]

Mustn't be a strong lad then.
 

[andy_e]

I want to get it on the record that I have never broken any holds off this problem

yet

[tommytwotone]

So - having been on this tonight I'm pretty confused...

Assuming I was using the large white pebble to left hand, sharp crystal thing for right hand and then getting the left hand flat crimp with left hand and rocking up off a high right foot for the other flat crimp with right hand, and then trying to get to the break with left foot on the white pebble...I'm assuming I'm on the right hand variation, and not the 7b (in the Total Climbing) / 7b+ (in Yorkshire Gritstone) / 7c (on yorkshiregrit.com) version, right?

If I'm right, the 7b/7b+/7c takes the crimp I'm getting with the right hand, and then goes up from there (i.e. what Nige does on the yorkshiregrit.com video)?

[Will Hunt]

Thought I might look at Syrett's Saunter tomorrow eve as I'll be at Caley. Still trying to figure out where this goes.

This early pic shows Nathan taking what appears to be quite a central line up a very clean wall.

Yer man Nathan Wind on Pebble Wall , Caley, around '91 (check out the colourful leg wear in the spotting team - nice.)

Fast forward a few years, a few snapped pebbles and footholds, and a few extra trees and we get the pic of Kim on the previous page who seems to be in roughly the same place or slightly right.

Then this chap seems to reach quite far right and I can't really tell where he is in relation to the dead centre of the slab. It looks like he's standing on lots of pebbles! Looks as though he might be right of centre.


The guys in this video (non-locals) climb the eliminate that I was talking about when I started this thread. Definitely not Syrett's Saunter, way too close to the groove.


The only other thing I can find is a pic of James Turnbull on UKC. It's hard to tell but from the look of where he is, where the pad is, and which holds on the wall have been cleaned, I'd say it is likely that he's on the variation climbed by the Lithuanians the video above.
http://www.ukclimbing.com/images/dbpage.html?id=255315


That's about as much info as is out there. It seems that between the original true line of Syrett's Saunter and the wall immediately-left-of-but-not-using the groove, there is an indeterminate number of possibilities that can be climbed at a variety of grades. Would it be unreasonable to assume that  the original Syrett's Saunter is now defunct through loss of holds and has become dirty through lack of traffic, and that the bloke in the portrait filmed vimeo is coming closest to the true line (I.e what we might now reasonably call Syrett's Saunter); with an easier variation to the right, climbing the eliminate wall immediately left of the groove?

Anybody got any more info?

[Will Hunt]

So. A mere 11 years and 2 months after first putting my hand in the break on this funny eliminate, I finally climbed it last night (YYFY!). Since then, the eliminate that I originally described and everyone agreed was not Syrett's Saunter has been adopted as Syrett's Saunter (see vimeo videos ad infinitum). The eliminate has also lost a few pebbles since 2008. It definitely felt harder than most 7Bs that I've done, so I'd like to revise my original grade punt of V4/5!

What I did, was quite similar to what this bloke did, but I think some of the pebbles he stands on have gone so the feet are almost all on natural smears now. And the pebble that he reaches out right for has gone since 2018, so you now use the central OK crimp and a poor ripple to it's right. A slightly different top sequence getting hands to the break as well.


Which makes me wonder - what of Syrett's Saunter (the original version)? There's something to the left of centre called Dave's Saunter. Has anybody done this? Is it independent of the original central Syrett's? The right eliminate on the slab clearly gets lots of traffic under the name Syrett's Saunter, but holds to the left do show signs of brushing. I wonder whether this is Syrett's or Dave's, or whether they're actually the same thing, and whether anybody has done them in the last few years.

[gollum]

Just looked in my “Bouldering on Yorkshire Gritstone” guide from 1993 and there wasn’t a documented line then but I have a scribbled note to say there was a line to the left.
I vaguely remember doing it and that the rules were no holds that had chalk on them but I think they were brushed. I would think this was around 1995.
In that guide it was called Pebble Wall and I do remember that I used to do it a lot and nearly every time had a slightly different sequence.
Steve Rhodes based his stuff for the guide on the stuff Chris Sowden has put in the YMC Yorkshire Gritstone Guide from a few years before when there were only three grades, although I can’t remember what they were.
Life was much simpler then and the holds on this particular problem were probably very different too.

[Will Hunt]

the rules were no holds that had chalk on them

That's a new one!

[tommytwotone]

I have a memory of a conversation with Nigel P a good long while ago when I had made good progress on the line Doug's on in Will's post.

We confirmed that Syrett's was about 4 feet to the left of this, and there certainly used to be a video of the beta on yorkshiregrit.com , sadly though this will be lost in the mists of time.

For what it's worth I reckon that:

i) The aforementioned is actually Syrett's Saunter, (which was also called Pebble Wall)
ii) The arete / groove thing is MBCK Groove
iii) Inbetween the two is the thing Doug is on, and that is something totally different, which from memory felt a lot harder than 6b or whatever MBCK Groove gets, but nowhere near as hard as the 7b+ listed for Syrett's (sorry to anyone who has taken the tick and sprayed on the'Gram about it in recent years). This was 5 or 6 years ago and I don't know what's snapped off it in the interim.

[Pope B]

Just to add to all the other videos of it Dan Turner has a video of what he calls "Syrett's Saunter", (it's between 1:00 - 5:00ish)



Did he start in a similar place to you Will? Or were you further left?

The holds left of what Dan does have the remnants of some chalk on them, so some people have at least tried it. What Dan does looks pretty similar to what those Lithuanians did no?

[tommytwotone]

I think the thing in Dan's video is the same as what's in Doug's.

Perhaps we should refer to this as "Not Syrett's" or something, a la "Not Westworld"?!

[Will Hunt]

Did he start in a similar place to you Will? Or were you further left?

The holds left of what Dan does have the remnants of some chalk on them, so some people have at least tried it. What Dan does looks pretty similar to what those Lithuanians did no?

I started where Dan and Doug started. The only video I've seen of anyone doing something on this slab that isn't that is the very low-res video that was on YG.com years ago which showed someone going up the middle of the slab - i.e. left of the eliminate on the very right edge of the slab without using the arete of the groove. For the sake of clarity I'm just going to start calling this eliminate Syrett's Saunter Right Hand now. I suspect that Syrett's Saunter shares some holds with the RH version because in this photo of Kim on it, he's got the "good" crimp that you take with your left on the RH version in his RH and is looking up and left up the wall.



With regards the grade, when I originally came very close to doing this in 2008 there's no way that I was good enough to do the thing that I did last night - I had lucked my way up Breakaway at Pex Hill but not done anything harder than perhaps 6C at the time. Back then, Syrett's RH was about 6C, as agreed by JB at the start of this thread. Stuff has broken off it since then. A big pebble snapped in December 2017 (Alex Moore logbook comment here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/c.php?i=369364) and I had thought this was the one that Dan goes to at 4:13 in his video as I didn't see it or use it last night (it's big and obvious and clearly visible in the B&W photo of me on it years ago below). Maybe I just missed it?! I'm pretty sure it's now gone, though Dan only shot that video a couple of months ago? Or maybe Dan spragged a little divot left by the old pebble? I'm almost certain that that pebble isn't there any more.


Doug also takes a pebble with his left at 0:23 which I'm certain has gone. He also uses something for his left foot (a pebble?) at 1:01 which I'm sure has gone. Without the RH pebble, you end up locked into the left hand crimp and you RH is much closer to your LH. You now have to go RH to the top pebble which Doug gets with his left at 1:23. He takes it easily off high footholds, I ended up having to stretch to it off some lower footholds - I don't think I could have built my feet any higher from the small crimps (maybe they'd feel better in mint connies but the RH one is hardly there). Once you're boning that top crimp you have to build feet one last time and take the lowest and furthest right of the good mid-height holds PDQ. Wriggle your hands around to match on it and breathe a sigh of relief before wobbling up the top bit.



Sorry, that's a lot of waffle, but it explains why the grade has been creeping up. To me it felt 7B+, but more importantly it was just an amazing climb and it really puts you through the wringer. If you tense up or don't believe in the footholds then it spits you off. So you have to approach it in a calm and almost contemplative state of mind. But then you reach for that top pebble and start to bone it and you go tense, so it then becomes a race against time to get established on better footholds and get the good hold just above the pebble. In Dan's video he pops for the break but you either have to be Dan-strong to do this, or maybe it was just slightly sub-optimal conditions talking. Anyway, it just kept throwing stuff at me and you have to try and take it all in your stride and not start to panic or rush or you'll be off in a moment. Proper YYFY stuff getting to the top.

I'd love to see the original Syrett's get cleaned and climbed. And to know exactly where Dave's Saunter goes. Dan Varian has added Serious Saunterin' (8A) which takes the blunt rib to the left. Nails.

[tomtom]

Is there a replica on the Leeds depot woody yet?

[Pope B]

Petition to rename "Syrett's Saunter" to "Will's Wander" in memoriam of this 10 year journey of self discovery (and route discovery?)

By the sound of it all the original holds have broken off so it's a different problem now anyway.

[cheque]

Petition to rename "Syrett's Saunter" to "Hunt's Punt" in memoriam of this 10 year journey of self discovery (and route discovery?)

[Will Hunt]

 

All excellent suggestions.

[webbo]

Petition to rename "Syrett's Saunter" to "Will's Wander" in memoriam of this 10 year journey of self discovery (and route discovery?)

By the sound of it all the original holds have broken off so it's a different problem now anyway.

If you go with how these problems were originally named ( by Al Manson ) who named them after people he climbed with not who had done them. The majority were done by him.
For example Bob’s Bastard was named after Bob Berlin’s, Martins muff after his brother, Webster’s winger after some moaning old twat and Death drop 2000 after the same old twat fell off and broke his ankle on it.

[tommytwotone]

Did the central line, which at the time people used to call syrett's saunter, a long time ago...was back there the other day showing someone round and was shocked by how green and dirty  it was...also it looked as though a key rh pebble (bout the size of a football boot stud) had come off a few inches beneath the break.. that pebble was key for me so would imagine this'd be full value for 7b now.. most likely 7b+.

This matches my recollection of Nige's description of what is actually Syrett's Saunter AKA Pebble Wall. He definitely described "basically mantling on a pebble" so I'm 99% sure that a) Syrett's AKA Pebble Wall is the line off to the left of the thing we're talking about here and b) it's probably been overtaken by lichen and greenery hence why people think the thing we're talking about here is Syrett's.

[PeteHukb]

I've cleaned and climbed the arete today ("MBKC Arete" I think) which uses all the same holds as Syretts Saunter RH but also the arete. It's really good, obviously not as hard but still felt Quite Tricky to me.