The new Climbers Club guide to Portland by Steve Taylor, Ben Stokes and Jim Kimber is the latest of many great new guides to frequent climbing stores over the last few months. This new guide, as with the previous edition, covers the classic peninsula of Portland through to the inlets and cliffs of Lulworth Cove. As you would imagine there is a strong sport climbing emphasis; however there is still plenty of traditional climbing on offer, not to mention more than a smattering of bouldering to boot.

On the whole the climbing featured is situated on the natural limestone sea cliffs of the area with a few well known quarried exceptions. The climbing on offer covers most angles; from the classic steep to vertical areas of Blacknor and Battleship, on the west of the isle, through to the overhanging cliffs of Cave Hole and co. on the east.

Unlike the previous guide this new creation is laid out in the seemingly in vogue A5 landscape format, similar to the newest incarnations of the Peak and Yorkshire bouldering guides. This, as with the other guides mentioned, has plus and minus points. The obvious benefit of this layout is the great ability to showcase crags, action shots and topo’s on a much grander scale, an area where the new Portland guide has done a great job, offering, as it does, a proliferation of good quality maps, photo topos and some super landscape action shots. The main downside to this format is the inherent lack of stability, especially in guides over three hundred pages. Whilst the Peak and Yorkshire guides attempted to solve this issue by outlaying a bit more on the quality of paper used, this does seem to be an area where the Climbers Club have cut corners, with the pages feeling unerringly flimsy. As such this 415 page guide book does have a distinctly shaky feel when in use, and it will be interesting to see how it stands the riggers of prolonged use.

Despite this slight criticism the guide overall seems a fine piece of work and the peripheral information, covering general area info, safety, facilities and flora and fauna is concise and well written and the history section makes for interesting reading. Overall the new Portland guide is a credit to its authors and will no doubt be an invaluable asset to many a climber for years to come.

Purchase the Portland guide here.