Kendal Festival - First Details

The guys at the Kendal Mountain Festival have released some early details of the 2007 programme and it's looking good with some interesting names lined up for the event in November.

Lectures

For starters, the lecture line-up includes top climbers Greg Child, Thomas Huber, Jack Tackle, Will Gadd, Simon Yates and Neil Gresham. Headlining the Saturday night programme is Sir Ranulph Fiennes and we'd hazard a wild guess that he'll be talking about his reluctant ascent of the Eiger Nordwand earlier this year.

Then to top things off, old rockers Doug Scott and Chris Bonington are combining for a one-off Kangchenjunga and Kongur lecture. It's just like a Who reunion, wonder if they'll be trashing their plastic boots on stage...

Film

The highlight of the film programme so far looks likely to be the premiere of The Beckoning Silence, a drama-documentary adapted from the Joe Simpson book by the team behind the award-winning Touching The Void film. Both Simpson and the production team will be there and the organisers expect a rapid sell-out once tickets are available.

Books

Headlining the Book Festival is a special Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature retrospective featuring contributions from previous BT winners Al Alvarez, Andy Cave and Greg Child chaired by Ed Douglas. There's a new Nature Writing event plus 'Adventure or Madness?' hosted by Terry Gifford and featuring US mountain fiction writer Jeff Long, while Colin Wells chairs a 'New Writing' event featuring Andy Kirkpatrick, Nick Bullock and Jan Levi. Last but definitely not least, Nicholas Crane will be making his first lecture appearance following the forthcoming Great British Journeys TV series, retracing the steps taken by Britain's greatest explorers.

Adventure Film Academy

Extreme Film School's been renamed for this year, but the basic format's the same with budding film-makers able to enrol in a four-day workshop programme followed by 48-hours of intense filming and production work. More details when we have them.

More Information

You can find more details as they're released at www.mountainfilm.co.uk