18th May 2023. Dreams of Lost Buttresses and other stories.

Three of the stories have already been published - in Alpinist 78 & 80 and the 2022 edition of The Himalayan Journal. You can read another one - Red Rocks - here.

The full collection will be published later this year by Little Peak Press and here's a working version of the front cover. We're on the final edits at the moment and will share another story below in a month or so, about the same time as Little Peak opens pre-orders.

12th May 2023. Exhibition of my artwork at the Alpine Club.

I'm delighted to say I have a solo exhibition of my artwork up and running at the Alpine Club.

'No Substance but Light' runs until the end of July at the Alpine Club’s premises of 55 Charlotte Road, London, EC2A 3FQ and will be open from 12:00 – 17:00 on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Visitors are kindly asked to book in advance by contacting the Alpine Club Office on 0207 6130755 or by email to admin@alpine-club.org.uk.

Included in the exhibition are a selection of my oil paintings, pastels, watercolours and AI-synthesised art. Mountain scenes from the Himalaya, Mont Blanc Massif, Dolomites, Canada's Lake Louise and - closer to home - the Scottish Highlands.

I'll be doing an evening talk about inspiration for my art, wider writing and other creative work at the Alpine Club at some point in June and will share the date for this here as it's confirmed.

11th October 2022. A calendar for 2023.

For 2023 I've designed and had printed a calendar showing twelve of my most recent oil paintings. In May 2021 my oil painting style changed and these paintings are a substantial part of the outcome. Since summer 2022 I've been exploring mountain ranges I have and have not visited in person through trying to capture their feel and light. Some are closer to imaginary mountains, others are almost hyper-real as painting them took me back to the place. I hope these twelve paintings have something approaching the sense of vibrancy I felt as I painted them.

Each calendar is signed by me. They are £16 (which includes free UK P&P).

You can order a copy using the link below. It's also available on the Little Peak website.

Order a signed 2023 Calendar for £16.00 including free UK P&P

30th September 2022. Newish paintings.

I've been oil painting a fair bit in the last year or so and have not really kept website up to date with my new paintings. Here are a selection - they are all for sale! You can also order prints. I will get these new paintings on here properly soon - if you're interested in the meantime please contact me.

1st September 2022. Writing short stories inspired by climbing.

Since the beginning of the year I've been writing short stories, many of which have been inspired by returning to rock climbing a few years ago. Before I ran and cycled I was a climber, spending my late teens and twenties travelling the mountains, moorland crags and seacliffs of the UK, scaling as many rock faces as I could. I loved it, only really stopping it due to injury (in 2002 I got hit by a car while out riding my bike, leading to muscle damage that hampered my climbing, kind of pushing me into cycling and running).

Returning to it has been wonderful. These days I have less free time to travel like I used to - I'm mainly bouldering on the Wharfedale grit, occasionally cragging in Yorkshire and the Lakes, along with trips to the famous Henry Price wall at Leeds University when I'm working in the city.

This is all inspiring my writing - I've started a collection of short stories inspired by my love for climbing and the places I've visited along the way. One of my first stories Dreams of Lost Buttresses was published in Alpinist 78 and another, Selkie-Boy will be published in Alpinist 80 later this year. A third - Painting the Goddess - is one of my contributions to this year's edition of The Himalayan Journal and I've put another one - Red Rocks - on this website here.

Ravens keep featuring in these stories - I felt the need to paint one :o)

15th August 2022. Guest editing 'The Himalayan Journal'.

This year I’ve had the honour of working with Nandini Purandare and Aparna Joshi as guest editor of The Himalayan Journal. I’ve not been to any part of the Himalayas before so this may seem a little strange. However, this year the theme of the journal is ‘How do we go to mountains when we cannot visit them physically?’.

We’re coming to a key point in the editing now – all the contributions from wonderful writers, artists, scientists and mountain-goers from all over the world have been received and edited, soon the journal will be off to print.

Now things are calming down a little (for me at least!), I’m taking some time to reflect on my own contributions to the journal, and how these have been inspired in part by working with such a fantastic group of contributors, as well as previous writing about these mountains.

From a distance I got rather obsessed with the mountain and Goddess, Nanda Devi. I read as much as I could find about her, and for a while could not stop painting pictures of her. Some of these paintings feature in the journal, along with a short story I wrote about a woman who got obsessed with painting Nanda Devi...

As well as the printed books and magazines I read, I searched for online stories of Himalayan mountain folklore (translated into English) as I could not find many of these in print. I found a host of sources, many of which were fascinating, not least Indian Mountain Stories, an online book I devoured and would love to find out more about its author, Lauren.

With contributors including Yashveer Bhatnager, Stephen Alter, Vineeta Muni, Katie Ives, Anindya Mukherjee, Anna Fleming, Paul Pritchard and Bernadette McDonald, my own work is intermingled with some fantastic writing, photography and artwork, along with inspiring expedition reports and book reviews. We’ve still got some work to do before the journal is ready. It will be published this autumn and I can’t wait to see it in print!

25th April 2022. Cairngorms Light.

I've been painting a fair bit recently and will be adding some more images to these pages soon.

In the mean time I've just added this new painting to my Cairngorms Light painting project and blog. I've been feeling inspired again by the plateau and its surrounding edges, along with a trip I made up there last autumn.

I feel a few more paintings from scenes last September coming on and I'm planning my next journey onto and around the plateau - hopefully in midsummer :o)

17th August 2021. Oil painting commissions.

I know it's still summer but just putting this out there in case anyone would like to commission me to do an oil painting for them in time for Christmas. I have some space over the next few months to take two or three of them on.

Please scroll down to the last few news items below get an idea of what I've been up to painting-wise recently. If you have a favourite mountain scene (maybe somewhere in the Lakes, Wales or the Highlands, anywhere else gladly considered!) you be interested in me painting for you please give me a shout to discuss - on twitter, instagram or my contact page here.

The painting on the right is my most recent, looking east from close to the summit of Blencathra in the late afternoon on midwinter's day 2016. I still have a few tweaks to do but it's just about finished.

11th July 2021. Red Pike and Bleaberry Tarn.

The oil painting continues. This is Red Pike reflected on Bleaberry Tarn, above Buttermere in the Lake District. In June I headed over for a night of sleeping out, running and swimming. I bivvied on the fellside just below the tarn, this painting is based on a photograph I took about 6:30 in the morning, on my way up the Pike.

Over the past couple of months I've done four paintings of Lake District landscapes and now my head has moved on to scenes from journeys I've made over, around and into the Cairngorms.

I think this has been influenced by Nan Shepherd's poetry, which I've recently been re-reading. In particular the poem Embodiment, from her collection In the Cairngorms, in which she explores and discusses how the way mountains (and indeed everything else) look is purely down to light. Her words are stunning, captivating. They make we want to look and then paint and paint.

28th May 2021. Painting in oils again.

It's been just over a year since I last painted in oils. Something I love to do, but the urge to do so seems to come and go. I have learned to go with it, do it when I feel like I need to, let it be when I don't feel the spark to do it.

My mum has recently spent a week visiting my aunt (her sister) on South Uist, up in the Outer Hebrides. I love it up there, it was kind of bittersweet when the amazing scenes they were seeing kept popping up on WhatsApp. Part of me was really pleased they were up there enjoying themselves, another part of me was jealous, wishing I was up there too.

These feelings - tensions - and the lovely photographs brought the spark back. As soon I saw one particular image on WhatsApp I knew I had to try and paint it. Here's the result. The location is Rubha Aird a’ Mhuille, the western most point on South Uist. This is looking south across the bay. While I wasn't up there with my mum and aunt, I have been there many times, it's a beautiful place.

I'm glad my mum had such a good trip - like most of us she's not got away very much in the past 15 months. Also glad to say the spark is still with me, I have a few more oil paintings in mind to do over the next month or so.

21st March 2021. Curlew calls

I had a great bike ride early this morning, off-road over the back of the Otley Chevin. It's spring, the trails are drying, lambs are in the fields and the trees are budding.

I think one of my most favourite things nature-wise this time of the year is the return of the curlews. As I cycled along this morning I heard a few. I recorded one calling to send to my mum (who loves curlews) then I thought I'd put it here too. Feel free to have a listen :)

12th December 2020. Muddy running and biking, writing more mountain stories and the Traceless launch at Kendal.

It's nearing midwinter. My local paths and trails are the muddiest and slippiest they've been for ages but I am still enjoying getting out and about. There is something about this time of year I love and it's not Christmas. Maybe anticipation of the shortest day and what this means for renewal. After this year I think we could probably all do with some of that.

Since the first lockdown and now in tier 3 West Yorkshire, I have been writing mountains stories and sketching some of the mountains I write of. A kind of displacement, I'm finding remembering, writing about and sketching mountain memories is a good way of getting to them when they are more or less physically out of bounds.

I recently wrote about this for The Guardian. So far I've put two mountain stories on their own webpage on this site here and I'll put another one online before Christmas. This new one's all about the mountains of Lochaber and a bike ride I did around some of them on Christmas Day 12 years ago.

Geoff Cox and I enjoyed launching and talking about the inspiration for our new book Traceless at Kendal Mountains Literature Festival in November. It's still online, if you missed it you can still see it on catch-up until the 31st December.

16th August 2020. Crag Notes and Traceless Pre-Orders.

It's been a pretty busy time writing and making books. I've been really pleased to contribute to UKClimbing's collection of Crag Notes. This one - Marked Stones - is all about the gritstone boulders and outcrops on and around Rombald's Moor - their climbing, history and the fascination I feel for them.

Over at Little Peak Press we're also just finishing off preparing Geoff Cox's and my new book Traceless for print. Sub-titled Exploring the spirit of fell-running, Traceless is inspired by running over and around the Lake District fells, you can find out lots more details and pre-order here.

25th July 2020. Getting Away.

I have just had a week of the quiet beaches and fells of Northumberland with my family.

I've spent time there before but not all that much time in the hills. This trip we stayed up high in them, close to the Scottish border.

It was great to explore them on foot and by bike, as well as hang out at the beach in the sunshine. My job has been busy throughout lockdown, it was great to have some time to unwind. I also got a bit of new writing done along with some final editing of my latest book project Traceless.

7th July 2020. 22,000 Miles now on Kickstarter

Last year I started up a small independent publishing press - Little Peak Press.

We've published two books so far, both by me, High Inspiration and A Cycling Year. Our next book is not by me but an old friend of mine Richard Seipp.

Rich and and his 15-year-old son Tom are well-known for their cycling adventures. Over the past decade these adventures have got bigger and bigger, culminating last summer in a ride of the Tour Divide, the 2745-mile bikepacking route that travels the length of the North American Contintental Divide from Banff in Canada to Antelope Wells on the US border with Mexico.

Now Rich has written a book about these adventures. Called 22,000 Miles, we have just finished with the final edits. It will be published in October, it's live from today on Kickstarter for 30 days. On the Kickstarter you can order the book as well as a host of other limited editions. This Kickstarter will hopefully support the publication of 22,000 Miles. It's an an amazing story, one that in editing I have found incredibly inspiring - my itch for cycling long miles in the mountains has returned in earnest!

16th June 2020. Talk about A Cycling Year on the 25th June, 7-8pm.

I had a few talks planned for this summer with bookshops and other places. As they're not going ahead due to the pandemic, I thought I would venture online to do them.

The first one is going to be about my book A Cycling Year. I will talk about the bike rides I did as part of it, the inspiration for them (including writers and artists such as Marie Hartley, JB Priestley, Eric Ravilious and Edward Thomas), show some of my paintings that form illustrations and also read from the book a little.

The talk will be online and attendance is free. Everyone welcome! If you'd like to attend please register with eventbrite and a link to the Zoom talk will be emailed to you a couple of days beforehand.

8th May 2020. Painting rock

Just recently I have become a bit obsessed with gritstone. As I write in my recent article for UKC, I had wanted to be climbing it by now. Hopefully soon I will again.

Instead I have been painting it. In 2012 I painted a few gritstone crags local to me in watercolour and then dots in ink. Just recently I have started to want to explore painting grit close-up in oil. Just about finished, this new painting is a close-up of one of the faces of Little Almscliffe, a gritstone buttress that sits to the north of Stainburn Forest near Harrogate, a few miles as the crow flies from the larger and better known (for climbing at least) Great Almscliffe.

When I have finished this one I will likely move on to another of Chevin Buttress. I have a photograph of it from years ago, in the summer after rain. The rock was an incredible deep reddy-brown colour, occasional streaks of a blue-green that was almost turquoise in the sunlight. I think I might have a go at trying to paint it, try to be bold and express all the colour and light I see.

If thinking of rock and memories of climbing is influencing my painting, it is also affecting my writing. Maybe it's also the influence of lockdown, unable to get to the mountains and living as we all are through the insecurities and strains of the pandemic, I am finding comfort in remembering past times in the mountains and on the crags of the UK, in painting and writing about them.

I am unsure that we will return to what constitutes 'normality' any time soon (and am not sure if I want to completely go back to the old normal, the pandemic has brought positive change intermingled with the tragedy). I am incredibly lucky to live in a place with forest and nature close by. Fresh air and sunshine in green open spaces has been a daily experience for me, and this is something, along with the painting and writing, that is helping me at the moment. The mountains and rock will come back. In the meantime I will keep painting and writing about them.

3rd May 2020. Memories of climbing - some new writing and sketches on UKC.

Time is passing in these strange lockdown weeks. Since last November until we went into lockdown in March I had been climbing a little, training with the aim of getting some strength back. I have also been sketching and writing about climbing - back to when it was the main thing I did with my free time, before I started to get heavily into cycling, fell-running and racing.

I had hoped that by Spring, with the advent of drier weather, I could get outside on the rock some more, start bouldering and climbing routes again. With lockdown that hasn't happened so far, hopefully it will soon enough.

Through this time I read, wrote and sketched a little, finding the more I did, the more I remembered about the years I spent climbing, the routes, the places, the memories. Here's the resulting piece on UKClimbing.com

6th February 2020. More paintings

I have finally got around to getting my newest oil paintings scanned. They are now up on their own page where you can also order prints.

I did these paintings last year after a summer holiday in Kintail in 2018, and also wrote a blog about how my head seemed to get back into oil painting during this holiday.

28th December 2019. John Rawnsley.

Sad news arrived yesterday evening - John Rawnsley, the founder of the Three Peaks Cyclo-Cross passed away on Christmas Day.

I first encountered John when I was 23 and doing my first ’Peaks. I found out after the race who he was, that he had won the first edition of the race and had ridden it over 30 times.

Since then I saw him through the years, at the ’Peaks, other cycle races and in his beloved Dales. A quiet man who always struck me as having an underlying steely determination, these last few months I have been finding about more about him and the Three-Peaks as, with my friend Jo Allen, I have started working on a book about them both. In November I wrote a blog about it and you can read it here.

Thank you John and rest in peace.

27th October 2019. New paintings big and small.

I have almost finished a painting I started back in May. Looking to Beinn Fhadda from Bealach an Sugaine, the painting on the left is the final of a set of four I have done after a summer holiday in Kintail last year. I blogged about how some of the running I did during this holiday helped to get my head back into wanting to paint with oils. Since then I have painted in oils sporadically and have this and the three others to show for it. In all of them I have been trying my best to capture the light I saw that week in the mountains.

The three smaller paintings on the right are scenes from a three-day run I did around the Cairngorms in June this year. This trip was welcome in so many different ways - a chance to run and sleep high in the mountains, and to explore some more of this stunning stretch of hills.

Finishing the bigger painting is going to have to wait a little longer as I am soon heading out to the Banff Mountain Festival where Waymaking has won an award. I still can't really believe I am going - back to the Rocky Mountains on a trip I didn't know was happening until two weeks ago.

15th October 2019. Waymaking wins at Banff.

Waymaking has won the 2019 Banff Mountain Literature Award!

This award really is a collective achievement of many ‐ I was one of four editors and over fifty contributors to Waymaking and I consider myself very lucky to be heading out to Banff at the end of the month to the prize-giving.

We started with the idea of Waymaking back in 2014. It has been quite something to help with and to see it grow beyond the concept to the calls for contributions, all the way through to a prize-winning book, beautifully designed and published by Vertebrate Publishing.

Last December I wrote a blog sharing my view of the next steps after Waymaking. Roll forward nearly a year and along with a couple of creative friends, I have set up a small (think micro) publishing house running out of Otley ‐ Little Peak Press. So far we’ve made two books and have another on the horizon. Waymaking showed us how mountain and adventure literature can be stretched outside of the established genres. We really want to explore this some more.

So I’m heading back to Banff 🙂I’ve been once before, staying for a few days prior to the start of the 2010 Tour Divide race. I’m looking forward to my visit, sight-seeing and exploring without a long race to prepare for. Along with going to the prize-giving ceremony I’ll be visiting the wider mountain film and book festival and running up as many mountains as possible.

16th September 2019. A new book and blog.

Summer's over, we are well into September. I've had a fun if busy few months. Less time to run and cycle as I would like but those rides and runs I have done have been grand. One great thing this summer has been the bike rides I have done with my daughter. As she grows her bike has followed - she is really enjoying getting the hang of a bigger wheeled bike and we have been having more off-road adventures together.

This year we had our summer holiday up in the western Scottish Highlands and Outer Hebrides. I have written a blog about it and of the sketches I did while away.

Back home I have been putting the final touches to my next book A Cycling Year. It will be out in mid-October and will be the second book by our new publishing house Little Peak Press.

29th June 2019. Launch of High Inspiration and Little Peak Press.

My new book High Inspiration was published on Thursday and was launched last night at The Artworks in Otley. At the same time we launched Little Peak Press, the new independent press that has published High Inspiration.

Thanks to everyone who came along and to The Artworks for hosting - all the illustrations from High Inspiration are still on display, along with copies of the book and prints, feel free to pop by and take a look.

It was a fun evening, great to speak with everyone and I went home full of ideas (and wine).

You can order High Inspiration from here or the Little Peak website and will soon be able to buy or order it from your local bookshop.

Many thanks to Jo Allen for the photos.

15th June 2019. A Cairngorms Crossing.

Last week I spent three days running around and exploring the Cairngorms a little more. I have felt pretty drawn to them recently, reflected by the fact that the last Munro I climbed back in January prior to this trip was also the first mountain top we took in during this trip - Beinn a Bhuird on the eastern end of the plateau.

I was running with my friend Andrea Priestley. We initally planned to spend two nights up high on the plateau but decided to stay in Rothiemurcus forest on the second night, at Glenmore Lodge, as a storm was due to come through during our second day on the hill.

In the end the storm never came. Lucky for us, we just got very wet during the latter half of our last day, as heavy showers arrived in from the south. Starting at Linn of Dee on the south‐eastern side of the mountains, we first ran onto Ben Avon and then headed west to camp the night by Loch Etchachan. The following day saw us heading over Ben Macdui, Cairngorm, Glen Avon and Bynack More, before heading off into the wonderful forest of Rothiemurcus for a luxurious night of bed & breakfast, beer and chips.

On our final day we went west, into and over the Lairig Ghru, climbing the mighty Braeriach from the Pools of Dee, and then traversing the mountains south to Corrour bothy and the low path back to Linn of Dee via Derry Lodge.

It was a fantastic few days away. Something I felt I needed, topping up my batteries having not been to the hills for some time. The Cairngorms are a magical mix of high mountains interspaced with fascinating valleys, edged by beautiful Caledonian pine forests and full of life ‐ we saw mountain hares, a ptarmagan on her nest and all kinds of other birdlife in the forests. They are one mountain really, so old to have worn away to a high plateau, an artic tundra quite unlike anywhere else in the UK. At the moment I feel quite caught under their spell. I took a fair few photos from which I will paint in the coming months.

28th May 2019. A new painting, book and a newish blog.

My new book High Inspiration has gone to print. It will be published on 27th June, I am taking pre-orders and these will reach those ordering early to mid-June. It has been very exciting to put this book together, I have been working with a great editor and designer and am very proud of how the book has taken shape. Hopefully my words in some way justify how it looks as Rhiannon has done an amazing design piece - it looks brilliant.

Over the past few months I have been working with Jo and Rhiannon as they have edited and designed the new book, writing new work less and painting a bit more. I don't have much time to do any of this but the time I do get I value. The latest painting I am working of is of Bhein Fhada in Kintail - here it is in its early stages, it will change a fair bit in the coming weeks. This is the fourth painting in a series I've done after holidaying there last summer. The light in the hills that week in Kintail was superb, I write about it and how it has inspired me in my latest blogpost.

Over the past ten years painting and writing have become increasingly important to me. High Inspiration has been whirling around in my head for the last five years. Now it's reached the print stage part of me feels that it's finished, but of course it isn't. Next up comes the hard work of telling people about it! For an introvert like me this is in many ways the hardest part...