News and Announcements

Hey Bowliners,

Weather looks great tomorrow. We're going to Froggatt, meeting in the Heather Wall / Tody's Wall area around 10:30am. Or meet in Outside cafe at 9:30am for a pre-climb full english. Be there!

Andy Potter
BCC Meets Secretary

Hi Bowliners,

Apologies once again for the lack of updates from me. It's been a busy time and we've had some trouble with the website which is why you will notice there are no meets listed yet. Something I will be fixing over the coming weeks and in the meantime you can find all the dates for this years meets below.

However just because the website has been quite doesn't mean the club as been quiet. All this proper winter weather has had those who like to climb frozen stuff out in the mountains making the most of the good conditions. Those of us who prefer our climbing a little warmer have been making the most of the indoor sessions and also enjoying watching people doing the hardwork at the BANFF film festival showings.

Hut improvements

There has been a range of improvements to our lovely club hut recently. If you've stayed at the hut recently you may have noticed the new storage shed behind the hut where we can now keep all those things that really belong in the shed. It's also where you can store your bikes rather than bringing them into the hut. Following the installation of the shed club members have installed steps up to the shed and the recent 'Love the hut' weekend added an access ramp to from the camping to the passage behind the hut.

We've also had new PVC windows fitted to the back of the hut. A bigger fan for the shower room. The club members at the 'Love the hut' weekend also fitted new guttering, rubbed down and repainted the facias, improved the drainage at the back of the hut, re-inforced the bank behind the hut, and painted the hut the outside of the hut. All being well the hut should not need any more maintenance until our re-furb in the autumn (more on this in a future email).

A big thanks to all the club members who have helped at the hut, and a special thanks to Paul Parker our hut secretary for organising all these improvements.

AGM Quiz

If you miissed the quiz at the club AGM, well here's your chance see if can do better than the winning team. They scored 31 points. Below is a link to the Quiz Questions (although we've removed the music round and the video question). Just a little help, for the Route Aspect round answer only N, S, W or E.

Quiz Questions Link

So don't cheat and try Googling for the answers OR looking at the quiz answers first!! When you've completed the quiz, you can look up the answers here at this link

Quiz Answers Links

Can you beat the magic winning score?

Charnwood Hills Race

It seems so long ago now but the Charnwood Hills Race was a big success and it won't be long before we are planning next years race. Make sure you've got the date in your diary, Sunday 3rd February 2019, we'llneedlots of volunteers. And in the meantime checkout the race blog article by Chris Lamb - Running the Charnwood Hills Race

Climbing

Last but not least it's looking like we might be getting some weather for climbing at last. You should all have received an invite to Climbing this Sunday in the Peak District. Hope you can make it, but if not why not join us for Bouldering on Tuesday at The Climbing Station or Roped Climbing on Thursday at The Tower.
 

Kind regards,

Andy
BCC Meets Secretary

Hi Folks,

We are looking to put in the clothing order for Bowline Base layers and Fleeces as soon as possible. With Xmas now over and hopefully healthier finances can we ask you to put in your orders as soon as possible. There is an order form attached for you to fill in or you can just put what you want direct in an Email. Pictures of the Base layers and Fleeces are on the website with costs shown. The Base layers are particularly good quality and value being the Subzero Brand; the club's head honcho (aka Zoe) has had one for 10 years and it's still going strong apparently. We haven't had many orders for the Base layers, originally we were only going to supply these in Black, which is available in across the full size range. However, we can also get some in Aqua Blue but only in the sizes S and M. The colour is slightly darker than the Sky Blue colour women's hoodies we ordered a couple of years ago.

Please can you send your order forms/emails to andyrailton@gmail.com within the next two weeks. Remember to state sizes and quantities.

Hi Everyone,

After a lot of hard work and preparation, our race organisers and their team have pulled off another great Charnwood Hills Race. This is an important event for our club so a big thanks to everyone who was involved in the preparation and on the day.

It was great to see Bowliners taking part in the race again. Congratulations to Zoe Proctor who was 1st place Bowline Woman and to Rob Pullen who was 1st placed Bowline Man. You can check-out their times along with all the other results over on the club website.

Peter Fryer has kindly shared his pictures of today's race. You can view the pictures here - https://pafphotos.weebly.com/charnwood-hills-2018.html

We did have some lost property left behind after the race, including some car/house keys. If anyone is looking to reclaim their lost items or hears of anyone who lost something please get in touch with the race administrator - charnwoodhillsrace@bowlineclimbingclub.co.uk

Next years race will be on Sunday 3rd February 2019 so get the date in your diary now and we hope to see you there.

Kind regards,

Andy
BCC Meets Secretary

Hi Bowliners,

Back in July 2017 the former secretary and Chair of the Bowline, Peter Thompson, discovered a treasure trove of records in an old suitcase in his attic relating to the foundation of the club in 1951 and its early years through to around 1960. Dave Unwin has taken up the mammouth task of shifting through these records and combining them with later records, which we already had, to compile a brand new history of the first 25 years of our club.

The result is 'A Bowline History: the first 25 years' which runs to just shy of 50 pages and presents a fascinating insight into how the club began and how it developed throughout it's formative years and onwards into the late 1970's. We've updated our club history page on the website to include this new work and we hope that maybe in the future we can extend this to cover the remaining years up until today with the same detail and quality.

Having read the history myself I am very grateful to Dave for what must have amounted to a huge amount of work. I would strongly encourage you all to grab a moment in your comfy chair, with a cup of tea/coffee, and immerse yourself in an excellent account of the first 25 years of our club. Visit the history page on the website and download the PDF using the link (be patient when you click the link as the PDF is around 3.5MB and may take a little while to download).

A big thanks to Dave for putting this together. If you have any comments please let me know.

Kind regards,

Andy
BCC Meets Secretary

Hi All,

After going through a fair few revisions I am pleased to announce that the 2018 Meets List is complete. A big thanks to Tony Bishopp, Simon Perry, Paul Parker, Andy Railton and Zoe Pickering who have all volunteered to organise meets this year which is a big help to me and means that we have a really good range of meets for you join in with. 

The following list gives you the dates planned for all the meets. As you can see some already have event pages on the website giving you all the details. I aim to get at least the outline details for the remaining meets on the website in the next few weeks so that the Meets & Events page becomes the goto place for finding out what is going on. When we have each meet ready for you to book places we'll send out an invitation email for you to book places as normal.

Please pop these dates in your diary now and we hope to see as many of you as possible at whichever meets take your fancy!

Also I'll be rebooting the regular update emails, these will be sent out once every two weeks with the latest club news, meets, etc. In the next email look out for details of the recent improvements to the hut and a big update of the club history.

Don't forget we are still meeting every Tuesday night for bouldering at The Climbing Station (Loughborough) and Thursday nights for roped climbing at The Tower (Beaumont Leys).

• Wednesday 7th February (evening) - BMC Midlands area meeting and Suzie Imber talk. [Andy Potter]
• February 17th-20th - Climbing on the Jurassic Coast. [Tony Bishopp]
• Wednesday 14th March (evening) - The Club AGM and Quiz. [Andy Potter]
• Saturday 3rd March - BANFF film festival. [Zoe]
• March 17th/18th - Spring love the hut weekend [Paul Parker]
• March 31st-7th April - Fountainebleau bouldering. [Andy Potter]
• Wednesday 18th April (evening) - BMC Midlands area meeting [Andy Potter]
• April 21st/22nd - Club hut weekend.
• May 5th-7th (May Day bank hol) - South Devon and Dartmoor [Andy Potter]
• May 19th/20th - Meet secs birthday bash (North Wales) [Andy Potter]
• May 26th-28th (Whitsun bank hol) - Lake District (family friendly) [Andy Potter]
• Wednesday 6th June (evening) - BMC Midlands area meeting [Andy Potter]
• June 16th/17th - Club hut weekend.
• June 23rd/24th - Family meet (club hut) [Andy Potter]
• June 30th/July 1st - Saunders Mountain Marathon [Andy Potter]
• July 14th/15th - Summer meal (Peak District) [Andy Potter]
• July 21st/22nd - Family meet [Andy Potter]
• July 28th/29th - Club hut weekend.
• August 12th/13th - Dorset [Andy Potter/Tony Bishopp]
• August 26th-September 8th - Dolomites [Andy Railton]
• September 1st/2nd - Club hut weekend
• Wednesday 5th September (evening) - BMC Midlands area meeting [Andy Potter]
• September 15th/16th - Lake district (Barrow hut) [Andy Railton]
• September 15th/16th - Family meet (club hut) [Andy Potter]
• September 22nd-29th - Croatia [Simon Perry]
• September 29th/30th - Club hut weekend.
• October 6th/7th or 13th/14th - Mountain Biking Meet (Brecon Beacons) [Paul Parker]
• Saturday 10th November - Annual Dinner and slideshow [Zoe]
• November 17th/18th - Kendal mountain film festival [Zoe]
• Wednesday 21st November (evening) - BMC Midlands AGM [Andy Potter]
• Sunday 2nd December - Chairmans Walk [Zoe]
• January 22nd 2019 (Tuesday evening) - Bouldering competition [Andy Potter]
• Sunday 3rd February (2019) - Charnwood Hills Race.
• Late February (2019) - Skiing trip [Andy Potter]
• Wednesday 13th March (2019) - AGM [Zoe]

Hi Folks,

The Charnwood Hills Race is coming up in just less than 3 weeks time. Our means of recording the results now uses chipped timing, though we back this with good old paper and pencil records as well. The electronic timing people use a laptop with a big battery back-up. Although not strictly necessary it would useful to have a generator available just in case. Does anyone have a small generator that they are willing to lend out? We almost certainly wouldn't need to use it. If you do can you drop me an Email.

Cheers

Andy Railton (andyrailton@gmail.com)

Hi All, 

Firstly I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and that you've recovered from the effects of any excesses over the past few days. With the New Year approaching it's time to start thinking about 2018 and the adventures we can have together, whether they be on rock, on foot or on two wheels. With that in mind you'll hopefully have already got the meets we've sent out over the past few weeks in your diaries. If not remember you can always find all the meets over on our website.

You'll have noticed that a number of the meets I've sent out already are not being organised by me. This is something that I am very pleased about as it means we can put on more great meets by spreading the work involved across many people. Most meets are actually pretty straight forward to organise in principal, and if we have most meets being run by club members it means the Meet Secretary can be free to provide guidance and assistance to those running the meets. This is important as we will be in need of a new Meets Secretary in near future so we want to make the role something more manageable, requiring less work for the individual than is currently the case (trust me I know).

With this in mind what I'd like is some more volunteers to run meets for 2018. We are aiming to discuss the Meets for 2018 at our next committee meeting on Wednesday 17th January so get in touch with me before then and let me know what meet you'd like to offer to organise. I can do all the website/facebook/email stuff for you, all I need is the brief outline of the meet, date/times, location, etc. It's much easier than it seems and very rewarding!

I'm off to Joshua Tree for a few weeks so I look forward to reading all your suggestions when I return. Andy :)

Hi Folks,

We are going to be ordering some club clothing. We are doing this by individual order so you'll need to let us know how many and what size items you would like. There is a unisex Subzero thermal long sleeved top base layer in Black with a quarter length zip (£21.50), a female cut Navy/Marine micro fleece (100 weight) with a quarter length zip (£18.50) and a male Royal Blue micro fleece (100 weight) with a quarter length zip (£14.50). We are putting the club Logo over the left breast in Yellow. Attached is an Order Form (filled in as an example) please fill in the CLEAR fields, NO text in the YELLOW Cells please. Also attached is a Doc with some pictures of the Clothing in the colours we are ordering.

We'd like you to get the ORDER forms back to us in two WEEKS please to: andyrailton@gmail.com.

PLEASE DO NOT PAY US AT THIS TIME - WE'LL COLLECT THE MONEY OFF YOU WHEN WE DELIVER THE CLOTHING

Regards

Andy Railton

Hey Everyone,

Great to see lots of you at our slideshow. A really diverse range of inspiring adventurers were shown, thanks to Claudia, Tony & Rachael, Simon, Rob, David, and Hadyn.

We have one more meet to see out 2017... get ready to have fun and test your skills against your fellow Bowline Boulderers at our annual Christmas Bouldering competition on Tuesday 13th December, 19:00 at The Climbing Station in Loughborough. With pizza's to share afterwards and fun prizes it's the place to be! 

The competition kicks off at 19:30 sharp and you'll want to warm up first so we suggest you get there for 19:00. This year we will have two main competitions, one fun competition with a handicap system to make it as fair as possible. And a 'serious' points based competition for those like that kind of thing. In both cases you'll need a partner to climb with and you'll get 50 minutes to complete as many routes possible.

At 20:30 we will have the speed climbing competition set by Mr Richards, this will be the same format as last year with pairs of climbers racing to be the fastest across the wall. 

After the competition we'll gather for Pizzas and drinks upstairs. There will be a prize for the male and female winner of each of the main competitions and also the winning pair in the speed climbing competition. We'll also have a free raffle with some bonus prizes.

It costs £5 to enter. Cash on the day please (ideally the exact amount).

Look forward to seeing you there,

Andy

Hi Bowliners,

It's the next round of The Climbing Stations bouldering competition this Thursday evening. So we are swapping evenings this week, we will be roped climbing at The Tower climbing wall on Tuesday evening and bouldering at The Climbing Station on Thursday evening.

See you there,

Andy

Hi Bowliners,

I'd like to draw your attention to the recent release of the BMC Organisational Review Group report and the survey for members to give their feedback on the report.

This is a really important time for the BMC and its members, and that means you guys because as a BMC affliated club you are all members of the BMC. The BMC is a membership organisation and as such it is critical that it has feedback from the membership to help guide the work that is done by the BMC's volunteers and staff. The Organisational Review Group report makes a number of recommendations which will shape the future of the BMC if they are accepted by the membership at the next BMC AGM.

The Organisational Review Group would really like to receive lots of feedback from members about the recommendations so there is time to make any changes in advance of the AGM. They have put together an online survey to help make this as easy as possible. You should all have received an email from the BMC about this which contains a link to the survey, please please take a moment to review the report, even if you just read the summary version and then complete the survey. This needs to be done before the 22nd December. In case you didn't receive the email the survey can be found here - https://www.warpsurveys.com/bmc2.

You can find the reports on this page of the BMC website - https://www.thebmc.co.uk/whats-the-future-of-the-bmc-report-launch-kendal-mountain-festival.

Kind regards,

Andy Potter
Meets Secretary

 

Hi All,

This coming weekend it's our annual Chairman's Walk and Lunch. We're going to enjoy a lovely walk in the Peak District and it definitely makes sense to share lifts. Saves the environment and saves you money too!

If you are able to offer a lift it would be great if you could reply to this email. Likewise if you are looking for a lift please reply and then you'll be able to co-ordinate transport amongst yourselves.

See you Sunday!

Andy Potter
Meets Sec