Make or Break: Don’t let climbing injuries dictate your success

For the past 4 years or so, I have been working on a book about climbing injuries. It spells out in detail how to treat them once you have them, based on the evidence from high quality scientific research and practice. More importantly, it discusses all the things we do in our climbing routine that cause our future injuries and prolong those we have already caused.

I have titled the book ‘Make or Break’. This is because becoming an expert in understanding the causes and treatments of climbing injuries will be make or break for your climbing career. As Wolfgang Gullich said, “getting strong is easy, getting strong without getting injured is hard”. In my first book, 9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes, I suggested that many aspects of training for climbing are not rocket science. Keep showing up, pulling on small holds, pushing the limits of your motivation and learning from others and you will get stronger fingers and get better at climbing.

It will be injuries that will get in the way of your progress, and if you let them, they will dictate how far you get in climbing. The research suggests that nearly all climbers get injured at some point. Finger injuries are most likely, followed by elbows and shoulders. Of course there are countless bits of our anatomy that can break if suitably mistreated. When you get one of these injuries, you need to be the expert, because unfortunately you cannot rely on anyone else to make sure you recover. This is not because doctors and therapists fail to do a good job (although they sometimes do). It is because there is no single source of advice on the vast array of things you must do to make sure you recover well and prevent future injuries. The climbing coaches, physiotherapists, otrhopaedic surgeons etc. that you will see will all give you pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, but it is you who must put them together.

Claire MacLeod dispatching our pre-orders the other night.

During the process of writing the book, I have discovered many pieces of hard scientific information and subtle concepts I wish I’d known when I was 16. They would have saved me so much of the pain and psychological torment of injuries that climbers everywhere share at some point in their career. There are many strands of information in the book. It is a handbook on how to take care of yourself as a lifelong climbing athlete. In this blog post, I will briefly outline three messages that will give you a flavour of what you will find in the book:

1. Tendons don’t like rest, or change.

Surprisingly, sports medicine research still has a lot to learn about tendons and how they heal and respond to training. However, there have been several big steps forward in the research over the past decade or two. The only problem is, new knowledge in sports medicine takes years or even decades to filter through to the advice you receive. Consider the following quote: 

“In general, it takes approximately 17 years to get 14% of research findings adopted into practice. Moreover, only 30–50% of patients receive recommended care, 20–30% receive care that is not needed or that is potentially harmful and 96% may receive care with the absence of evidence of effectiveness.”

I was shocked too when I read that. I was aware through my own experience that the advice I’d been given to recover from my own climbing injuries was often at odds with research I’d read. But to discover the extent of the lag between research findings and advice given to sportspeople is depressing. We only have one life and we cannot afford to receive outdated advice. Unfortunately, the internet hasn’t made the task of unearthing reliable advice any easier. Scientific journals remain hidden to most behind a paywall, while the same poor quality, outdated and non-specific advice drowns out the few reliable sources.

One of the shifts in understanding from the past decade is that slow-onset tendon injuries such as golfer’s elbow do not respond well to complete rest. In fact, it often makes the condition worse. Moreover, many of the adjunct treatments often offered - stretching, massage, ibuprofen may do little to contribute to healing, and only affect pain. Instead, the most promising treatment has been large volumes of exercise of a specific mode (eccentric) and at a level which causes some pain. Much of this seems counterintuitive at first sight, which is why a detailed understanding of what happens in injured tendons is so important. 

Some practitioners in sports medicine are still working to a pre-1990s concept of tendon healing and will advise you to heal your injured tendons by resting them completely. In contrast, modern research has found that the best way to heal injured tendons is to use them, but only in a way that is specific to the nature of the injury. Tendons do not like rest or change. The successful formula is to provide constant stimulus to tendons to maintain their health. But if you want to change that stimulus, such as by training harder, you must do so very carefully, using all the cues from the body that you can listen to.

Section 1 of the book discusses in detail the limitations of the sports medicine industry and how to get the most out of it, and section 4 details the modern understanding of tendon injuries and how to successfully treat them.

2. Know pain, or no gain

Above I hinted at the difference between the pain level and the healing status of an injury - a crucial concept for any sportsperson to understand. Understanding of the nature of pain has been another area of science that has advanced hugely in sports medicine. It is not enough to be able to listen to your body. You need to be able to decode the messages and see the patterns in them. This is both a science and an art.

Climbers need to be able to differentiate between healthy soreness from training and activity, and damage that demands action. They need to be able to take understand how various treatments affect pain from their injuries and what this means for their daily decisions on how much activity to expose them to. They need to understand how many aspects of their environment and psychological state amplify or suppress pain sensations from their daily activities. Pain sensations are an essential measure for climbers to monitor, but without detailed knowledge of how it works, it is very easy to interpret those messages from pain wrongly.

Section 2 of the book is entirely devoted to understanding pain.

3. The luxury of doing sport badly will not last

A young body can withstand a surprising amount of abuse. But the relentlessness of sport and training amplifies the effect of small imbalances or errors, and it doesn’t take long before these accumulate to the point of injury. Balance is the key word here. One area of sports medicine that has come on a fair bit in recent years has been the recognition that athletes need to develop strength in a balanced way, taking care to strengthen muscles on both sides of joints. That is a good development, but it is not enough.

Balancing of the stress imposed by training for climbing needs to come in several other ways too. Matching increases in training intensity with improvements in the quality of rest is one way. Improving technique and the design of the training progression to spread that stress is another. 

Sections 1, 3 and 4 deal with these concepts and the specific details that climbers should be aware of which commonly result in climbing injuries.

Repeated forceful internal rotation of the arm (the right arm on this move) is a big part of climbing. So it is no surprise that the internal rotators of the arm at the shoulder become dominant. You may well get years out of a healthy young shoulder without feeling a thing. But the resulting impingement syndrome affects so many climbers. If you'd rather prevent it, it's not hard to do a little work to keep the shoulder joint working well. And if you are already suffering, you may be able to reverse it quite quickly, unless you've really tried to ignore it for too long!

Maintaining awareness of the foot during hand movements is a core skill in climbing injury awareness. Slipping feet are a important cause of many finger and shoulder injuries. Do your feet slip too often? Do you know what to do when they do slip? Correct your climbing technique and you can push your body a lot harder before it starts to complain.

Finally, there is the psychological challenge of injuries which is hugely underestimated by both climbers and their friends and families. In sections 1 and 5 of the book, I present the idea that we should see the injuries we suffer as a crucial message that something must change in our way of approaching climbing. By seeing the injury as an opportunity to go back to basics, to understand what must change and make that change, we can not only improve our climbing, but enjoy the process rather than endure it.

I hope the book will help many climbers prevent their future injuries or overcome existing ones. You'll find the book in our shop here, dispatching worldwide.

My climbing injuries book is up for pre-order

Readers of this blog will of course know that I have been working on a book on climbing injuries for some years. It has turned out to be a much bigger book than I originally envisaged. It has been a huge project, but in a few weeks I will reach the finish line. The book is currently with the printers and some time in the next few weeks, many boxes of copies will arrive at my house. The final stages were a rather exhausting process, but I’m excited to release it and potentially help healthy climbers stay healthy and injured climbers to get back to the fray.

I’ll write a more detailed post about the content of the book when the stock arrives in early February. If you want to make sure you get a copy as soon as you can, we’ve put it up for pre-order in the shop here, and it’ll be in the post to you as soon as it arrives. I’ve also added the table of contents below so you have an idea of the breadth of the areas covered.

My aim was to write the manual on how to stay healthy as a climbing athlete that I wished I’d had when I was 16. The first priority was to base my writing on the cutting edge of sports medicine research, wherever it was available. The second was to include all the diverse aspects of injury prevention and recovery, and then present them in a way that allows you to see them in the whole context of your efforts to stay injury free. As with the world of training, too many injury texts focus on or overplay the importance of just one aspect of sports medicine.

Having spent around 4 years researching, thinking and writing the book, I do feel that if I’d had access to the information contained in it when I was a teenager, my health and climbing achievements over the past 20 years would have been significantly better. I hope the book can make this difference both for both youngsters who have yet to experience injury, and battle scarred climbers like myself.

Below is the table of contents, so you can get idea of the scope of the book. You’ll find the book in the shop here. 

Section 1: Make or break

Why the treatments you have tried aren’t working, and what to do about it.

How to use this book

The real reasons you are injured

Stress and injury

The reason you are still injured

The language problem

The practitioner problem

The sports medicine problem

The missing link

Exceptional use: the luxury of doing your sport badly

Prevention

Your visit to the doctor’s

Summary

Section 2: Know pain, or no gain

Pain and how to read it

Seeing the patterns in your pain

What is healthy soreness?

Understanding your pain

Going beyond reading only pain

Summary

Section 3: Removing the causes of injury for prevention and treatment

Are you only treating symptoms?

What was the real cause?

The big four: technique, posture, activity, rest

Correcting technique

Correcting posture

Activity

How to rest

Warm-up and injury

Lifestyle

Nutrition

Section 4: Rehabilitation of climbing injuries - treating both causes and symptoms

Acute rehabilitation

When to move beyond acute care

Goals of mid-late rehabilitation

Modern understanding of tendon injuries and recovery

Therapeutic activity - basic exercises

Therapeutic activity - climbing

Proprioceptive training

Walking the line of rehab ups and downs

Therapeutic modalities

Surgery

Drug and other emerging treatments

When to stop rehab?

Summary

Section 5: Psychology of injuries: dealing with the anguish of injury

Face it: it really is that bad!

Take heart

Finding motivation

Section 6: Young climbers

What young climbers should know

Too much, too young: a warning

What parents and coaches should do

Section 7: The elbow

Golfer’s and tennis elbow

Brachioradialis/brachialis strain

Other elbow injuries

Section 8: The fingers

Different grips in climbing and consequences for injury

Pulley injuries

When and how to tape the fingers

Painful finger joints

Flexor unit strains

Dupuytren’s contracture

Ganglions

Other finger injuries

Section 9: The wrist

Triangular fibrocartilage injury

Carpal tunnel syndrome

De Quervain’s tenosynovitis

Other wrist injuries

Section 10: The shoulder

Shoulder impingement/rotator cuff tears

Biceps tendon insertion tears

Labral tears

Shoulder dislocation

Frozen shoulder

Thoracic outlet syndrome 

Shoulder and neck trigger points

Section 11: Lower body injuries

Foot pain in climbers

Plantar fasciitis

Heel pad bruising

Ingrown toenails

Sesamoid injuries

Hallux valgus

Morton’s neuroma

Ankle injuries in climbers

Cartilage/joint injuries

Ankle impingement syndrome

Achilles tendon pain

Knee injuries in climbers

Meniscus tears

Anterior cruciate ligament tears

Medial collateral ligament tears

Hamstrings tear

Hernia

Section 12: Further reading

Further reading and references

Getting access to good care

The author’s tale of woe and hope

Glossary of key terms

Thanks

References

Meeting Adam Watson

The Fort William Mountain Festival asked us to make a short film about Dr Adam Watson to play at the festival, marking his award for excellence in mountain culture this year. I had of course read some of Adam’s work before when I’d just started climbing and was aware of his huge influence in the conservation of the Cairngorms and in many research fields including ptarmigan, snow distribution, Gaelic and many other areas of mountain culture.

Like the other people to have received this award in previous years, it was obvious when I went to meet him that he was still very much full of the same energy and interest in his passions as ever, even as a man in his eighties. 

I proceeded to record a fascinating interview that could have formed the base for a much longer film, on everything from Speyside Gaelic speaking poachers of the Cairngorm deer forests over the past 100 years, to living with innuit in Baffin Island, to the 1950’s Scottish climbing scene, to the qualities needed to underpin a successful contribution to literature and scientific research. Oh, and a bit of Gaelic song!

Driving home after a thought provoking day speaking with Adam, his wife Jenny and friend Derek Pyper, I had a new appreciation for the shared interest in mountains and the people involved in them, and felt pretty inspired by the energy that Adam puts into his lifelong effort to document and share his knowledge in writing so many books. The little film we made with the help of Adam, friends and colleagues of his, and a little music from Croft No. 5 is above.

Glen Nevis podcasts

One of the nice things about living where I do and working in the outdoor field is being involved in creative projects. Over the past few years I’ve made films and written books but recently I was asked to do something new  for me - produce a series of podcasts!

Claire and I have just finished a series of 6 podcasts about Glen Nevis on behalf of Friends of Nevis. If you haven’t heard of Friends of Nevis, they are the charity that looks after Ben Nevis and Glen Nevis. We were asked to produce and present 6 episodes and interview interesting folk who are connected to the place in some way. They are structured around different low level walks you can do in the glen, but it really doesn’t matter if you walk them, bike them, run them or use them to get to the cliffs!

I spend a big chunk of my life training in the glen, hence being asked to produce the podcasts, but although I know a lot about one aspect of the place (the climbing history and landscape), there are many other areas I had much to learn about; the natural and human history, geology and ecology.

So we had a great time interviewing many different experts in their different fields and putting together the episodes. The first one is uploaded now and you can stream/download it and of course subscribe to the others on the Friends of Nevis site here, or on iTunes here.

I’ll be uploading the episodes weekly. The first one covers the lower part of the glen and in it I talk to Cubby Cuthbertson about almost falling down Five Finger Gully above this part of the glen, Mick Tighe about the first winter ascent of one of Scotland’s longest gullies - Surgeon’s Gully - and how it got it’s name, archaeologist Jennie Robertson about the remains of ancient clan settlements you can find hereabouts if you know where to look and geologist and climber Noel Williams about the upside down geology of the Mamores range of mountains.

By the way if you would like to show your appreciation for this (free) production, the best way would be to make a wee donation to the charity on the Friends of Nevis site here (button at bottom of page). Every year they build the excellent paths you walk on the Ben and in the Glen, remove and carry literally tons of rubbish from these places and work to improve the facilities and the landscape generally. It’s pretty good work!

Perfect day in Torridon

After coming home from my lecture tour I’ve had a familiar feeling of being a little burnt out. This happens to me every year really, I cram as much work as I can into the west highland monsoon season - lectures, writing, coaching, events, film work etc. By the end of it, I’m always rather impatient for the calmness of just going to an empty highland glen and climbing some nice rock on my own.

I’m not naturally cut out for being on stage every night, and much as enjoy sharing the stories and meeting great people, I need some balance after many weeks of it.

So after a week of sorting out so many loose ends at home, the autumn monsoon finally broke to sunny gold coloured mountains, and I got to enjoy two great bouldering sessions. I can’t tell you how much of a lift it is to spend time on real rock in a nice place after so much time indoors.

First off I found some killer new beta on a tough project in Glen Nevis. One that will take a while, even with a clever trick of the foot on the crux. Today, the north west seemed to be the place to be and I scooted up for an afternoon on the simply superb boulders in Glen Torridon. I noticed that visiting Sheffield bouldering specialist Dan Varian, one of the strongest men in our isles at present, had added a few hard problems here in the spring that sounded great. 

I went up to check out a lovely arete called Stokes Croft, given about 8A. I enjoyed it a lot. Perfect holds, perfect conditions. The only thing not in perfect condition was me, still feeling decidedly sluggish from one of those nagging colds that seems to keep coming back. But as soon as I arrived at the problem, the sniffles and sighs melted away and I had the moves worked out in twenty minutes and then climbed it first redpoint. It’s probably more like 7C+ but it was still a lovely change to just go and repeat something that was all cleaned up and ready. I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning dirty rock this year!

Wee clip of this above. These last two sessions have fully redoubled keenness for the bouldering season, and for training training TRAINING!!!

New route in Peak Cavern

Pitch 1 (wet 7c+)  of Ring of Fire during the first ascent in Peak Cavern. All pics Triple Echo Productions.


The other shoot I just finished with Triple Echo for the BBC was even weirder than the Handa adventure! The director Richard Else managed to get special permission to climb in the show cave Peak Cavern near Castleton right in the middle of the Peak District. The idea was for myself and Alan Cassidy to see if we could find a route out of it!

Peak Cavern, otherwise known as 'The Devil's Arse' is one of the biggest and most impressive limestone crags in the Peak. In a region where every other inch of rock has a route on it, it’s pretty amazing that there are no free routes on this crag at all. It comes down to access. The crag has been banned for climbing forever as it’s a tourist attraction on private land - paying public walking around below climbs etc. Of course it’s a massive shame since I’m certain a way round it could be found with the help of the BMC. The cave is only open to the public until 5pm and then it’s locked. Climber’s lock-in? Sadly I don’t think a change is likely any time soon. We appealed as best we could.

Anyway, we enjoyed our special permission while we had it, in the name of making BBC television. But first we spent two days a bit further north climbing an even sillier cave. The team wanted to see if we could climb our way out of a proper Yorkshire Pot Hole - Jingling Pot. A 60m tubular soaking wet pitch black slimy hole in the ground. Alan and myself didn’t have the faintest idea how to tackle it. I started off climbing in winter boots and gloves which was a mistake and I quickly switched to rockboots even through the water was running down it, over the green slime. I thought back to a day last year climbing Pleasure Done (E3) in Pembroke with Tim Emmett in the rain. That was surprisingly amenable and the limestone had a weird friction even though it was soaking. Jingling might be just like that, but with a headtorch on?! It turned out to be a wee bit harder than that, but we had a great time and emerged squinting in the daylight after one of our stranger days out climbing.

After that we headed to the main event at Peak Cavern. Where Jingling Pot felt about E3 in the wet, Peak Cavern looked about 9c! The cave went in for over 100 metres. It also looked like any route there would take a lot of cleaning since the cave roof had hundreds of years worth of soot from the troglodytes who used to live there. With 4 days to do a route, we opted for a nice looking line going up a 45 degree wall then crossing the full length of the side wall and some roofs to gain a crack system in the headwall. It looked like it would go in about 4 pitches!

Back on dry rock on the superb pitch 3 (7b+)


After a hardcore couple of days with the hilti and wire brush, It looked amazing: 7c+, 7a, 7b+, 7b. Only one problem, the first pitch would be 7c+ if it was dry. But it was completely soaking and all the holds were full of slimy wet mud - proper caving style! At least Keith’s floodlights made it feel slightly more like a crag than a hole in the ground. I had a couple of tries, sliding about all over the place. It was actually better not to use chalk for most of the first pitch, it only made your hands feel slimier. 

Alan cruising pitch 2 (7a)


Next morning I set off again. I could see that slipping off could happen on any move, so why worry about any of them? I just kept creeping across the traverse, unexpectedly scrapping my way through to the stance, and we could enjoy the remaining spectacular pitches through the roofs and headwall. What shall we call it? Has to be 'Ring of Fire'! My first new routes in Yorkshire and the Peak -what a weird week!

Alan enjoying the fantastic headwall on pitch 4 (7b). The programme will be coming to a TV screen near you sometime next year. I'll let you know when it's scheduled.

Preparation for the good conditions season

Alex on ‘Boeing 747’ 7c, Monsterveggen, Stavanger

I’ve been quite enjoying a little time without any project focus in particular except training for the season of cold weather and holding onto small holds again. The Scottish autumn deluge has been not frustratingly bad, so no chances to get on my sport project. But at least absence makes the heart more psyched. Last week, an enforced  week of no climbing due to a bit of film work helped even more to make me super restless to climb. I’m just home from that and will be hitting my board as soon as this post is written.

I had a lovely weekend back in Norway doing a fun day of coaching clinics and a lecture in Stavanger. The day afterwards we took a little drive around and pointed at almost countless new route, nay, new crag possibilities in abundance here. Like Scotland though, good weather was not in abundance and I fought my way up a rather damp 8a+ to clear my hangover.

It's also a great time of year for me to do some work which fits quite nicely (well OK, acceptably) around training. This weekend I'm working on Lukasz Warsecha's climbing photography workshop in Wales (there are 2 spaces left on the course I hear). Later this month I'm doing a lot of lectures around the country so I might see some of you. For the first time in my climbing life I'm starting to think a little more in advance about what I might do next summer, and make some plans son for travelling to some cool projects. 

A small trip is getting close now to look at another steep sport project I’ve been told about but not seen in the flesh. We don’t have much time to climb it, but I’m pretty sure when we see it we’ll be keen to pull out the stops and try our level best. Better go train...

Working weak

Presenting on the Mountain Equipment stand in Germany

Interviews

Speaking about our Gore Experience Tour project in Norway.

It’s been a manic week of work. Travelling to the Outdoor Trade show presenting and talking to my sponsors, writing and organising a pile of stuff that needs organised. In between times, I’ve been back on my board learning to pull on small holds again after all the trad. 

Tomorrow, A few days of climbing will begin again. Please don't rain...

Kilted climbing

The other week mentioned a fun wee shoot I did with Steven Gordon. It was for Visit Scotland, promoting an adventure travel trade summit happening in Aviemore next month. Visit Scotland just sent over the picture they chose to promote the summit, so I thought I would share it.

I thought Steven did a fine job here!

Good fun work

Pic by Steven Gordon, Kilt by 21st Century, Chalksporran by BD.

Photoshoot work last week with Steven Gordon for a Scottish client (obviously!). Good fun day despite me hobbling on a dodgy ankle and Steven dislocating his Patella. We ate a lot of vitamin I, got sunburned and soloed roofs in kilts. Good work…

Steven writes and posts more pics on his blog here.

Week of progress

The past week has been a frantic effort to catch up on everything before I head back to Harris for round two with the Sron and the Atlantic low pressures. I have trained, mostly after midnight. I have amassed large quantities of research material for my injuries book to add to the already large pile. At least the ‘read’ pile is larger than the ‘unread’! Among other things I have visited family, built a bathroom, oh yeah, and trained some more.

Right now I’m about 95% of my best bouldering strength, which is good news since I haven't been bouldering for months and generally been wobbling about on big mountain crags or dangling about on Sron Uladail in the rain. I’m feeling close to a wee ‘performance peak’ right now. I have that feeling of of everything in my body working as it should, responding to the training and I’m moving with good confidence and momentum.

All that’s needed is an opportunity to unleash this on a Scottish rock project. Always the rate-limiting step. The forecast for next week’s trip to the Sron is dire once again. I’m preying for at least one day of rest from the north-westerlies so I can get the big rope rigged and get a look at the ever-dry lower half of the wall.

Working on the move

Coaching movement, in a hidden away corner of Dublin, Ireland Photo: Patricia Fox

Last week I re-set the climbing wall in Callander before heading off to Dublin. Confession: Three creme eggs, two bags of chips and a small porridge mountain were required to finish the job in the assigned two days.

Full of my third head cold of the last six months I headed over to Dublin early for coaching sessions with the Trinity College climbers. We had good fun working on endless problems for two days straight and thanks to the big crowd that came to my talk. It always strikes me when visiting Ireland for work or climbing the effects of being relatively isolated from the wider climbing spectrum. We have this a little in Scotland, but in Ireland it’s effect is multiplied. There is no sport climbing and although the small climbing walls around are pretty good, they don’t have the massive buzzing social scene I saw the week before in The Climbing Academy in Bristol. It has some downsides, because a big central meeting place of people with a shared interest inevitably makes good things happen. But I notice that the irish climbers are, generally speaking, some of the most hardcore lovers of outdoor, remote adventure climbing around, certainly in the UK. Everyone is a to a certain extent a product of their times. I was encouraged repeatedly to make it over again soon, but for climbing adventures next time on the many possibilities in the west of the island. I have a date with Orkney first, but I’m there!

I have a feeling that a major climbing centre in Dublin or Belfast is only a spark of inspiration away and would make a big change in the climbing community here.

As the hours in the bouldering wall passed I forgot about my head cold, for a while at least.

No more Ryanair

I’ve had enough. Unless there is absolutely no other alternative, I’ve had my final Ryanair flight. A sign of getting old and grumpy? It’s possible. But I don’t think thats the issue. Do I care? Not a bit.

It’s the first time in my life I’ve got so irritated by a business service that I’ve decided to spit the dummy and boycott even if it means some serious inconvenience. I’ve moved on from stuff before that I’ve felt is falling short of where it could be, to a better alternative. But never with a vow never to return. For example, I finally went from Microsoft to Mac after several years of hoping Microsoft would get good enough to make me want to stay. I got fed up waiting. But if they get good again, I’m not bitter and I would look at them again. It’s perfectly forgivable not to be leading the race all the time.

But Ryanair, in my world, are history.

Maybe eight years ago, lots of people had good things to say about them. They seemed to be really working hard to make things better for us. In the past year that regard has finally slipped into loathing every move they make and grudging every pound we spend on them. I haven’t talked to a single recent user of their flights who hasn’t felt the same.

For any of you who regularly fly with them and especially those like myself who work around Europe, I don’t need to go into why this is. For those who don’t and are curious, some stories are here. But it boils down to capitalising on the fact that folk are busy, are creatures of habit and can’t always research the alternatives and using that to make opportunistic raids on the wallet once you are backed into a corner (at the airport). Also, leveraging an infrastructure and weight in the airline industry to bully us into doing travel their way.

I’ll watch how this story unfolds with interest from the sidelines. I’m highly curious to know if this massive company have gone off the rails and are throwing away everything they’ve built up for the sake of greed, arrogance or foolishness, or do they really know what they are doing?

I would have thought that starting every other customer’s flight by hitting them hard in the wallet from behind as they reach the airport would be something customers would hold long in the memory? Especially when you make them stand in a massive queue to make them pay and give them plenty of time to deepen the hatred. How can this make business sense in the long term? It will be interesting to see.

When they go bankrupt I’ll smile. If they are still as big in five years time I’ll shake my head in amazement at the courageousness of this experiment in bold business. Good luck to them, I think they’ll need it.

Full disclosure/update: I’ve still got enough fizz to write the above post over a week after the flight in question. So it’s not rage, just deep dislike of what they are doing. A quick google of ‘we hate ryanair’ demonstrated I’m far from alone in my frustration and led to me becoming the 2623rd member of the ‘we hate ryanair’ facebook group LOL!

Ryanair provided some handy scales at the back of the queue. You pay to wiegh your bag, so you can discover how much you have to pay again when it’s a wee bit too heavy.