
Tides
A Climber's Voyage
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Narrated by:
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Nick Bullock
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By:
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Nick Bullock
About this listen
Winner: Mountain Literature Award, Banff Mountain Book Festival 2018
Shortlisted for the 2018 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature
Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes.
Now retired from the strain of work as a prison officer, Nick is free to climb. A lot. Tides is a treasury of his antics and adventures with some of the world’s leading climbers, including Steve House, Kenton Cool, Nico Favresse, Andy Houseman, and James McHaffie. Follow Nick and his partners as they push the limits on some of the world’s most serious routes: The Bells! The Bells! on Gogarth’s North Stack Wall; the Slovak Direct on Denali; Guerdon Grooves on Buachaille Etive Mor; and the north faces of Chang Himal and Mount Alberta, among countless others.
Nick’s life can be equated to the rhythm of the sea. At high tide, he climbs, he loves it, he is good at it; he laughs and jokes, scares himself, falls, gets back up, and climbs some more. Then the tide goes out, and he finds himself alone, exposed, all questions and no answers. Self-doubt, grieving for friends or family, fearful, sometimes opinionated, occasionally angry - his writing more honest and exposed than in any account of a climb. Only when the tide turns is he able to forget once more.
Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.
©2017 Nick Bullock (P)2019 Vertebrate PublishingAt times a little disconnected in 5 minutes he moves through time and space.
Llanberis to Nepal to a canal boat to Chamonix, you have to leap with him then it is a great listen.
Recommended.
Nick Bullock seeks adventure
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Very enjoyable
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A bit dreary, but not in a bad way
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Who gave Nick a microphone?!
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inspiring
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Thoughtful, exciting and poetic
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‘Tides’ found me during my own time of upheaval. Moving house and changing job in the same month, my first dip into the world of audiobooks provided my partner and I with a welcome soundtrack as we dismantled our life and prepared to start a new one in the north of England. Nick’s lyrical prose lulled us along the M62 as we ferried our belongings between houses, his northern twang recalling with stark clarity the ups and downs of an impressive career in the mountains.
This is a memoir with many faces, rattling from Chamonix in the French Alps to the peaks of the Himalaya and back to the UK. Bullock shifts between the years with each chapter, detailing impressive ascents of routes in Alaska, Canada and Scotland. His accomplishments are numerous, with many first ascents of Himalayan peaks and a Piolet d’Or to his name.
A logbook of ticks and accents though, this memoir is not. Bullock deals with all aspects of climbing: the challenges of balancing serious mountaineering with personal relationships, the ache of loss experienced when risks become consequences in the mountains, the sting of loneliness on the road, the longing for connection and its discovery in the most remarkable of places.
Nick captures the seduction of the mountains and the liberating unpredictability of life outside of your comfort zone. He describes the visceral fear of running out of time and grapples with questions of risk, selfishness and freedom. The snapshots of the quieter moments spent in his van give a fascinating insight into Bullock’s mind; a single raindrop falling from the roof of his van precedes the question ‘is there such a thing as to live too long?’
‘Tides’ is a brilliant, incredibly honest and personal insight into a life devoted to climbing – its joys and its discontents as rhythmic as the tides. Bullock’s reflections on life in the mountains often had me searching for a pencil in our moving boxes to scribble excerpts in a notebook, or interrupting my partner as we packed our life away and forcing him to listen to whole paragraphs. A rich and energetic celebration of non-conformity and the pursuit of passion, ‘Tides’, describes a life lived with intent, affirming ‘at whatever level, at whatever frailty, life has to be worth living’.
A fascinating memoir of life in the mountains.
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Listener received this title free
A thoroughly enjoyable listen. I would look elsewhere however if looking for something solely focused on climbing, as this book focuses a lot on the difficulties of maintaining relationships while being a full time climber.
4/5 ☆☆☆☆
More than the story of the life of a climber
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Epic, emotional, and inspiring!
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Go climbing with the Hippy!
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