I like it, it likes me.(2000 and 2017) Limestone high passes and the grand tour.

Years of trad climbing being my favorite and limestone a bit of a nightmare for the feet I had decided I was going to like Limestone now. Certainly the ambiance is great and the colours so full of summer hope with pastel shades and lightness. Also, keen on skilfull technical climbing through having had a long time to consider it, if that needed sport climbing to be safer I had moved to agree with it.
Previously I felt it destroyed the mental state needed to deal with a runout or difficult gear. The unknown climbing element of trad was replaced with a 3 m bolt followed by a 2m or 3m bolt. My decision to love it was mentally planned for ahead of my work in Italy and not only did I find there were sport crags but mountain outcrops high up of the light stuff too, unbolted and just natural features like the fossilised past they are supposed to be. I found this ridge that I was at different places and sections about 10 times with a really special cliff.
Several times I came back through this large limestone barrier and that set the scene for my picture 'On High'. Long walks in Scotland had opened the mind in this way to really long days walking but now the landscapes on my one day and a half days off were in a truly impossible place. This seems less foreign now and less distractingly beautiful but I remember how it felt like an opportunity as well. At times I could just concentrate on my good fortune and at others the possibility opened the door to stories.

Further vists to Italy and the south of France in 2017 saw me realise this was the Grand Tour taken since the Renaissance times by the sons and daughters of the wealthy, hosted and toasted abroad. I could see their art interests and realise I too was part of an evolved diaspora. To have an interest in the language and culture was my direct link. The coastal region near Genoa is supported and patronised from inland to the beaches and bars, from the families and friends in colleges today who have British connections. I had learnt this from my 2000 language textbook but I did not know then of the grand tour. I biked past buildings in Genoa which I imagined had for centuries been the Anglo-Italian language schools. This vist did not make me in any way feel I could personally knock on any doors. As in my prior visit the connection was modern and tradition has vitality but it was not obvious for someone passing through who might be who. A language school would be the most likely actual venue from the renaissance through to today I thought. Maybe a consulate though, large residence or collection of villas in reality. Art departments are in Venice in particular for British students I had known personally. I think other Europeans and nations have more cultural connections now here now. The British establishment probably no longer represent themselves in the upper classes in large numbers so British people are effectively Italians with heritage. Still the grand tour, I wondered if my posh upbringing which was intermittent as I saw it was something I again had disappointingly let down by a humble fly-by. The work I did in Italy was a in a way reinvention of the old ways however. It was a school connection forged on the spot by the founder, a visionary idea taken without reservation it seemed by our hosts and we worked with a non-stop welcome in an outdoor tent camp for British schools.
But I digress to reality when it is the fiction spurred from these fantastic scenes that I mostly have been creative later with. I was definitely fit and these almost weekly trips close on 15 hours long with at least 2000m of ascent in quiet summer baked wonderous mountain terrain. The first site of excitement was the obstacle where I found the most startling sight. Almost fear but 270 degrees vertiginous suddenly about me was so captivating after 100s of metres of ascent and had a lifetime best mountain view and exposure in one. I had come up steep chasse interdit pine slopes. This scene I have repeatedly failed to paint but still I think it is worthwhile as it keeps the scene alive. Gran Paradiso, though in fact the first summit on the ridge, not the big peak itself and from imagination rather than photos or sketches)
A mysterious large limestone barrier was the last obstacle, recreated in my artwork also as fantasy imagination. It was quite difficult to view easily (On High). It is encountered almost back home again at the first summit at 1500m on a flank overlapping a ridgeline again in woodland. Moody, most definitely an obstacle and as massive and creamy delicious as limestone can be. Soft round edges and big features which invite but can become so quickly safely impassable. The roundedness almost feels deceptively like a soft blancmange landing but it is friction, not pillows which are paramount when bouldering at 20m for the joy of it and the landing would be rock and scree.
I think I should describe this ridge I so loved. The majority otherwise after the trees is superbly open but due to scale and rocky nature still not predictable. Then there is the map itself which did not prepare me for an impossible summit. Truly nobody could get there I am sure, and the name is no name, hint given. I envisioned the famous Grandes Jorasses and the point Whymper link that I once read of as a treacherous tottering boulder ridge when ascended in the past. This just looks like one explosion after another, not worth any attempt.
Mention most impressively goes to La Grivola which is absolutely fantastic and marches out to make a barrier to the view that would take you to Gran Paradiso. With wildly massive, impossible to feel comfortable looking at rhombus faces interlacing to a long long awkward ridge. Far better to stick to it unless in excellent climbing form than the faces themselves by its emotional sight. I guess many people climb with an emotional edge and it is impossible to tell how awkward a face it at a distance but the overall impression couldn’t be more perfectly incongruous and off balance, not of course that it is one giant step up. I suppose what I was looking for was an escape route. Not from the North. Impressive and seductive.

I had the chance for a more literal tour in 2017 when I chose to enter the Cannes triathlon and experience some of Italy that had so captivated me before. From Milan airport when only the coastal campsites were open I made my way close to the route of 17 years before into France to race. I even undertook to repeat the climb over the top of Monaco by a fateful acceptance of the need to repeat the apparent error and learn why. Again my diary was an artists diary. It was more ambitious than even I had anticipatied but I was at least fortunate with the hot dry early season and had decent enough Italian. Europe had changed and was quite hostile to travelling in a significant fashion. Despite overwhelming friendliness and formal politeness that is so decent and sincere there were holes appearing in the fabric. It is not to be underestimated how much fun it is to bike tour, however the pace gets forced when you have been pickpocketed or robbed or sneered at. You are anyway unable to slow down due to deadlines and the excitement draws people out who do the same, the active fun crowd. That travel is such a big industry but campsites have withered away in so many places is a miracle of gluttony. With cars and less public transport many do also not camp in the sports world plus they hotel and fly, nipping about 800 miles only in a weekend too.
I suppose if I did not bike tour and only raced I would have fallen for this too. Even Cannes was only due to not having a travel partner for triathlon a flight instead of a bus. It seems to me that the activity must continue sometimes as a way of not just doing it anyway all the time. Also camping is a good carbon payback. You have to let nature controls the day as cooking is rooted to a stove and what you carry. Daylight becomes a major factor. One cannot demand so much but need to follow clues or specific roads if on a bike. Local snippets of Information are remembered all day and you get a hand from nature to enjoy yourself if the leads are too mean. You concentrate on the hill or go further, darker, wet. It is sad that so few cars are on the road this month of covid 19 as I write but every day beings a cyclist hit and run. I wonder if I am reading troll reports or there is anger against the environment which in turn is against the simple genuine people who want to do normal good things. Is there provocation going on, certainly it is not easy and I want to finish my job applications or get self employment as planned and be with positive people returning the economy from petrol and fast food nihilists than find they have even more rights to kill me.