Ok I have just put up on the website a list of errors that appear in Roca Verde 3.

Some of these are quite small – a few routes with the grades wrong and suchlike – but there are some bigger ones too.  The most important have been some very stupid errors with the new sun symbols which mean that in a few places (although the written description is correct), I have used the wrong sun symbols on the topos – meaning that it says sun in the morning instead of the afternoon – or the other way round.So what this means is that potentially people will have wasted their time (and money on fuel) travelling to places at the wrong time of day – and not being able to climb. Which is obviously a bad thing to happen and a big mistake by me.

In summary, there are three crags where I have put the sun symbols the wrong way round. These have symbols indicating that there is sun in the morning when it should be in the afternoon. And there are a couple of sectors where this has happened too. As well as this there are a couple of spots where the sun symbols have been the same since Roca Verde 1 and it seems they have never been right and people have recently been in touch to tell me.

So, if you go to the pages below you can see a breakdown of the errors and change your book accordingly.

Go to the Sun Symbol error page 

Go to the routes error page.

Obviously, this is very embarrassing for me to have made these mistakes and so in this in this Blog I wanted to take responsibility , to spread the word so people can update their books as well as well as to explain to some degree why these happened .

It’s ironic as I decided to change the symbols in the book as I felt that in the previous edition they were not clear enough. And I don’t want to offer lame excuses but part of the cause of these mistakes was that I was doing this the final weeks of doing the book – after the information and topos were done and the book was laid out. It was at this point that I tore my calf muscle something which two doctors assured me was nothing serious; but, after a few days my leg swelled up, I was in a lot of pain so I had to take strong painkillers and it was really uncomfortable and difficult to work at my computer.

Then, after a couple of weeks like this and working very long hours on the book, instead of getting better I got worse and I suffered a pulmonary embolism and was taken into hospital. This was something I had never heard of and only afterwards realised the seriousness. What had happened was that the calf tear had formed a series of blood clots, which, over the weeks I was trying to rest my leg (like I was told), went up to my lungs and blocked the arteries – and without a bit a luck and my wife having some medical background I could easily have died.

In retrospect, (and everything is easier with hindsight), I should have delayed the book a few weeks to recover from the hospital and give myself time to make more checks. But, I had put myself under a lot of pressure with the early sales of the book, as well as booking a printing date in advance, which I felt I couldn’t miss. And, with everything that had happened, I wasn’t really thinking clearly so I just carried on – which as it turns out meant that these errors crept through. And although it seems silly it’s this last period when you check over the book again and again and again where you catch the stupid errors that you don’t see the first, second or even the third time you revise it.
And a part of this is that when you are changing so many symbols across nearly 300 topos you start to become ‘blind’ to what the symbol means and which way the arrow is facing. And part of this was that I was so ill in the period when I was doing it. And I suppose the analogy I’d make is in some ways it’s a bit like when you repeat a words over and over again they start to lose their meaning…

Then, afterwards when I noticed there were some errors on a few of the routes numbering (and quickly added stickers to correct these) I was still ‘blind’ to the sun symbols being wrong in a few places, which is why I didn’t pick up on it straightaway. And it was only as some people e-mailed me about it that I started to notice the problems. So, like with the errors on the routes, I am going to add stickers to the rest of the books to correct these.

Anyway I wrote this not just to explain but to offer my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused and to say I will make sure the next edition is as free of errors as possible!!  And on top of this I owe further apologies firstly to anyone who has wasted their time travelling to one of these venues at the wrong time of day and then also to the equippers who trusted me with their ‘babies’ and I fucked up!!

Also, although correcting these errors with stickers has cost quite a bit of money I want to be clear that Roca Verde will continue to spend money buying bolts and donating to equippers in Asturias, Cantabria and Leon. So, as ever, some of your money from the book will go towards creating new routes to be enjoyed across the region. As of August 2021 I have spent around 6000€ from the Roca Verde bolt fund and the La Hermida book has raised over 4000€ for bolts and equipment.

Once again, I must say thanks for buying the book and I hope these errors haven’t inconvenienced you too much nor spoiled the book for you. And, if you know someone else who has the book, if you can send them to the website and if possible if you can share this Blog (or my Facebook post) to help me spread the word to everyone who has bought the book I would be grateful.

And my final thought is that although I am unhappy at having write this Blog, with all that has happened, I am happy to be here to write it. The last few months have been difficult mentally and physically but I am slowly getting back to climbing (you may have noticed my Instagram has been quite empty recently J) by doing some easy bouldering at my local Rocodromo and belaying my wife on her projects. I am hoping to be able to get on rock soon and should be recognisable as the fat guy with the ugly compression socks, on routes that don’t get my heartrate or breathing up too much!!

Once again apologies for the inconvenience and see you on the crag…