Rock Climbs

Six boys, one Rope, a Horseshoe, and the Crags.Remarkable exploits of six lads on the crags, emerge from the obscurity of lying on a dusty bookshelf for over eighty years. Here, we are transported back to a world of intrepid youth and adventure in the outdoors, long before health and safety had even been imagined. In Rock Climbs - a Guide to the Crags in the Inverness Area, published in 1938, Richard Frere, the sixteen-year-old author, gives a tantalising insight into what was possible for this group of young friends, comrades, with a rich mix of curiosity, determination, collaboration, and resourcefulness. Come and join the members of the Highland Mountaineering Club of the 1930s on the crags in their local area as they explore, and Richard turns their amazing experiences into a very worthy climbing guide of the period. It is a unique time warp for us to enjoy to the full. In republishing this special little book, we have sought to put it into context, and to discover Richard`s fine inspirational legacy for one member of his family. It also leaves us wondering what might have been, had War not intervened and scattered the group to the four winds. Only three survived this conflict, and the loss of their fellow youthful adventurers, whose friendships had been forged so strongly on the crags, left an enduring dark shadow over this memory.In these pages, we enter a world that has long gone, but we discover what youth can achieve together, could achieve today even, in a landscape that is as old as the hills.