Graham Hoey

Hello. I've been rock climbing for nearly 50 years now and live in one of England's finest climbing areas, the Peak District with my wife Helen. Aside from my local crags I've climbed extensively in the UK and abroad including the rest of Europe, Australia, North America and South America. I've been researching and writing about rock climbing for over 40 years and have had many articles published in Climbing magazines, journals and on-line. I have also been involved in writing climbing guidebooks throughout this time.

I was born in Nottingham in1958 and was introduced to walking in the Peak District by the father of a school friend. By the age of 12 I was holidaying in the Peak with school friends, camping and staying at youth hostels. I fell in love with the region and it has been my spiritual home ever since. Reading Chris Bonnington's 'Annapurna South Face' got me enthralled with mountaineering and at the recommendation of Nottingham's foremost mountaineer, Doug Scott, my friend Mark and I joined the Meadows' Boys' Climbing Club (an unofficial junior arm of the Nottingham Climbers Club) in 1972. This turned out to be a pretty dysfunctional group of reprobates but we 'learnt the ropes' with them and had some great adventures over the years. Uni had to be Sheffield (for the climbing!) and as a member of the infamous University Mountaineering Club SCUM I had my first taste of climbing abroad; the Verdon Gorge which is still my favourite climbing area outside the UK!

In 1978 I was asked if I wanted to get involved in fieldwork for the BMC guidebook team and so began 40 years of checking and writing up routes all over the Peak District and researching first ascent details. For twenty of these years I was a member of the BMC guidebook Committee overseeing the production of their guidebooks and during this period had roles as the Business Manager, Secretary and Chair. After leaving the committee in 2000 I continued guidebook writing and proofing for both the BMC and Rockfax culminating in the publication of the BMC Southern Limestone guidebook in 2018.

One of my climbing friends at Uni was Giles Barker who, like me, was fascinated by the history of climbing and he began to write a history of climbing in the Peak District. His work was to get in the way of this project then sadly Giles died in a caving accident leaving the book far from complete. Many years later I met with Phil Kelly, another climber fascinated by its history, and we decided to try and complete Giles' project. It proved to be a huge undertaking requiring a massive amount of research but eventually in November 2013, Peak Rock - the history, the routes, the climbers was published by Vertebrate Publishing. We used the launch to generate funds for charities and all royalties from the book go to two charities: the Sheffield Childrens' Hospital and Weston Park Cancer Centre in Sheffield. An enjoyable spin off from working on this book was taking Michael Portillo climbing for one of his Great British Railway Journeys (Series 8, Episode 8 - Chapeltown to Doncaster).

In 2015 I was asked by Vertebrate Publishing if I would like to write a new selected guidebook to gritstone climbing in the Peak District and I felt that after 40 years of writing for other people it would be wonderful to write one from my own perspective. As a fieldworker I've always felt that all details should be as accurate as possible and so after 5 years of effort involving over 180 visits to the crags, much detailed research and having climbed over 1,300 of the routes over this period alone the guidebook is eventually complete - Peak District Gritstone.

I hope you enjoy the books.

Regards, Graham