Time to leave the limestone: grit season is here. As Niall Grimes celebrates the start of his very favourite season, we've got free postage on all our grit guides. So get shopping, dig out that down jacket and head outside.

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” declared the poet John Keats, summing up that most beautiful and, for the climber, most blissful time of the year. Long gone is that winter training; gone too the big trips and long leads on our sea cliffs and mountain crags.

Now, as the days shorten and the air cools, the thoughts of the climber turn to the chill-handed raspings, the thirty-foot frolics, the heartbeat handjams, the yellowleafed backdrops and the downjacketed cosiness.

Gritstone season. Climbers draw themselves up to it like a cat to a warm fire.

The Eastern and Western Edges of the Peak District are rightly famous as having the greatest collection of gritstone climbs and boulder problems that this land has to offer. Along their dark reaches are many lifetimes’ worth of experiences: rattling off a dozen tall HVSs on Stanage Popular End; a brutal skirmish with a Curbar crackline; tiptoeing up a flawless Froggatt slab; a big team circuit of Robin Hood’s Stride boulders; rising above the world as you blast up the Roaches’ Great Slab; a heart-in-mouth highball in the Burbage valley; feeling tiny in the middle of a Millstone wall-climb; finally nailing that long-term project on the Plantation boulders; being at peace on a seldom-visited block of Skyline perfection. These and many more times are out there waiting.

BMC guidebooks: your grit companions

BMC guidebooks will be your companion on these adventures, shining their warm light into whatever nook that arouses your curiosity. Inspiration and information come in equal measure to help you have the times of your life.

Whether that is The Roaches guide to Staffordshire grit, Burbage, Millstone and Beyond, showing the best of the area’s quarries, Stanage, the definitive guide to grit’s finest cliff, Froggatt to Black Rocks, which will lead you from Froggatt, via Curbar, down as far as the mad outcrops in the Matlock area, or Over The Moors, as you can still catch a last fling on the mountain crags of Bleaklow and Kinder.

Special Autumn grit guidebook offer

To celebrate the start of the grit season, we're giving free postage and packaging on our guidebooks so you can enjoy it for less.

Visit the BMC shop and enter offer code GRIT at checkout. Happy gritting!

We want to say a big thanks to every BMC member who continues to support us through the Coronavirus crisis.

From weekly Facebook Lives and GB Climbing home training videos, to our access team working to re-open the crags and fight for your mountain access, we couldn’t do it without you.

Did you know that we've launched a U27 membership offer for just £1.50 / month? And with full membership from £2.50 / month, it's never been easier to join and support our work: 

https://www.thebmc.co.uk/join-the-bmc-for-1-month-U27-membership

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