01 Mar Nigel Callender sends Monk Life 8B+ VIDEO
On February 2011, Nigel Callender has repeated Monk Life, the 8B+ boulder first asceded vy Malcolm Smith on 2003 at Kyloe in the Woods, Northumberland.
"When I moved to Newcastle, there was one line that stood out." writes Nigel on his blog – "It was Malcolm Smith’s ‘Monk Life’ at Kyloe. The perfect line of sustained hard climbing on a beautiful scoop of bullet hard sandstone, tucked away in a remote Northumberland wood. Add to this the history of the line – this was Smith’s famous 10 year project, the only previous repeaters true Legends of the UK and international climbing scene from the past 10 years.
As a teenager training in my garage on freezing winter evenings I always felt that if Malcolm had the drive to be pushing himself to the limit, training on his own, far from the supposed training meccas of Sheffield and elsewhere, then I could try just as hard and anything less was accepting failure and rejecting what may just be possible."
blog Nigel Callender

