Northumbrian Climbing Guide

There is a right of access under the CRoW act to the westmost buttresses, marked as 'Shitlington Crags' on the OS 1:25000 maps. These are butttresses 1 - 5. Wood Buttress and Farm Buttress are currently out of bounds.

Climbers are known to have visited the crag from the earliest days of climbing in the county. Although the climbs ascended during this phase of exploration became well known, there was no documentation of either the names of the climbers or the names given to the routes. The first of the modem extremes was added by Bob Smith, John Earl and Peter Kirton in September 1982 with the ascent of Deranged. New routing activity in 1983 was confined to Dave Johnson and Neil Wood’s ascent of Faith and Jade. Bob Smith provided the overture to 1984 plucking Extraction in May before returning with the Cream Team one sunny day in October, by the end of which, the number of extremes on the crag had been doubled. Little Dave Homer - Bob Smith, Charity - John Earl and Plop - Andy Moss were all in the bag when Ian Kyle answered a call of nature and found himself Under the Boardwalk, one of the biggest roof climbs in the county on which he was accompanied by Andy Moss. Andy Birtwistle added the companion route of Grunt to complete the day and the years developments. Earl returned early in 1985 and added a few routes to the far west end of the crag, the best of which are Old MacDonald and Combine before Smith produced a fitting finale to activity on this crag with the technical Kremlin.