“I shall be gone, then.
Since you insist on walking the way alone.
Far from home, I sat beneath
the Eucalyptus trees
and dined with ghosts who have long since left.
Although, the memories linger still.
Look you! The place where time does slow.
Keep low, lest it demand the toll.
Staring back at I, the image of a man,
body wracked by the long passage of life,
years apart from the boy I used to know.
What did he say?”
To Whom the Years have Parted
Climbing has been my fullest passion for over six years. Innumerable vertical moments – from slogging up long and cold alpine climbs to padding between the sun-kissed boulders on England’s pleasant shores – have all left their indelible mark upon me as some of the most vivid of lifetime experiences. Being on rock has been an overriding obsession, one that has taken me all around the world: from the verdant forests of Fontainebleau, France, to the wilds of Kyrgyz steppeland and onto the orange rocklands of South Africa.
It was the love of such vertical playgrounds that lead me into my first paid journalism work, writing for www.climber.co.uk about all aspects of the UK climbing scene. The writing soon lead me on to my first ever articles published in print, a monthly 2000-word series called ‘Bouldering Beta‘, looking at different climbing venues all around England, Wales and Scotland. The pay was a pittance compared to the salaries of many of my fresh-faced graduate peers but it was a brilliant life spent training, climbing and writing in Sheffield, the heart of the English climbing scene. I can’t say I ever really got ‘good’ at the sport in the Peak District sense of the word, but I was training for over an hour everyday and just loved the carefree climbing way of life.
Over that time I wrote nearly 100,000 words on rock climbing and took a further 15,000 images from all parts of the UK. Featured below is a small portfolio collection of photographs from these climbing experiences and articles:
Reporting | A extensive selection of my climbing reporting can be found on www.climber.co.uk, using the search term ‘Jamie Maddison’. In addition, a select sample of my published magazine work for Climber Magazine can be found on the Writings page.
If you would like to use any aspect of my written or photographic climbing work, please get in touch via the Contact page.
Leave a Reply
Rock Climbing
- Photography
- Reporting