I love the outdoors and outdoor pursuits.

My first love is the sea - I call myself a surfer and even though I very rarely get the chance to go surfing these days (my current home of Nottingham is about as far away from decent surf as you can get in the UK) the experiences I have had when riding waves is where my mind wanders to when the fact that I'm so land-locked starts weighing me down. The rush and adrenaline ('the stoke') that I get from surfing is quite indescribable so now, much like a drug addict who can't get his fix, I've turned to another outdoor pursuit to try to fill the gap that not surfing has left. That is where climbing comes in.

I really enjoy the athletic aspect of it - pushing myself right to my limit, on sometimes tiny hold for both hands and feet.

The large majority of my climbing is done indoors where it is possible to really push the physical limits of climbing with the safety of crash mats and bolted walls there to cushion a fall.

It is not until you go outside that the mental side of climbing comes more into play. There is no in-situ protection there. Your life depends on your ability to place protection correctly in the rock so that, in the event of a fall, you don’t hit the ground.

This can make it a bit scary sometimes. Perhaps Geoffrey Whinthrop Young put it best when he said -

'In this short span between my fingertips and the smooth edge and these tense feet cramped to a crystal ledge, I hold the life of a man.'