What Happened to the Young Ones: Stuart Cameron

Interview: Monday, 18 March 2002 Sheffield, UK

At the age of 18, Stuart moved from Scotland to Sheffield accompanied by kindred soul, Malcolm Smith, both sharing the single minded aim of training hard, dieting hard, and climbing hard. However, their paths were soon to diverge.

Ten years on he is running three industrial safety companies, celebrating wedding anniversaries with the girl he met in the supermarket queue, and is busy raising a young family in an expensively quiet part of Sheffield where the satellite dishes most definitely outnumber the campus boards.

I was puzzled as to how two apparently similar young men could take such radically different paths through life. First of all, I asked Stuart about his climbing years:

I bumped into [Malcolm] at an outcrop - embarrassingly enough it's been so long since I climbed that I can't remember the name of it - we started climbing and training together from quite a young age, we got on quite well. I think we were reasonably similar individuals, we set some objectives and worked towards them. I think we were very motivated individuals, very competitive with each other, paid no attention to what other people were doing, […] we just trained and trained, pulling on ever smaller pieces of wood. It was a good laugh, we got on very well.

Stuart began training with Malcolm shortly after pulling out of Bangor University on account of the weather, a visit to stay with training gurus Neil Gresham and Matt Smith in Sheffield inspired a dedication to the pursuit of strength and power, and a Geophysics course in Edinburgh was no longer in the game plan. But for Stuart, it was not for long…

I moved to north Wales, and there was a good friend from Dundee, named Grant Farquar, we ended up going out and doing a lot of climbing. I decided to move back to Sheffield, moved in with a guy named Mark Leach. I think it was the day or week after I'd moved back, I went to the south of France climbing, [on the way] we stopped in Safeway's, and in a queue I ended up bumping into - who is now - my wife. I think she was the end of the career. So it's worked out fine (laughs).

[Soon I] had commitments that bumming around climbing were never going to sort out - I don't think her parents thought much about her teaming up [with me], she was from the other side of the tracks, a prim and proper girl, […] they detested me, I was this climber dude who did nothing by bum around, and had nothing to offer.

I gradually did more work and less climbing. It sounds a bit sad, but I stopped climbing because I couldn't be as good as I could be climbing full-time, so I decided to knock it on the head. My wife asks why I can't just do it as a hobby, but I can't do it as a hobby because it was the competitiveness, the setting goals, the working hard towards them [that motivated me]. I think in many ways what I have done is replace climbing with work and the business. I have the same goals and objectives, but delivering those to a family.

Stuart Cameron part owns three successful companies providing safety and access services, one of them is the world's largest provider of IRATA training courses. He has an office next to the Foundry climbing wall in Sheffield. I asked Stuart about this climbing link:

The only link would be that Jerry [Moffat] is a friend of mine, we were down at the Foundry one day, just in the general area looking around for property, a guy called Neil Bentley mentioned that there was some spare room going for cheap, so we got talking to Jerry and Paul [Reeve], and in the end we bought the whole building off them. That really is the only link.

Did the publication of the [Young Ones] article affect you in any way?

Yeah, as an individual I can be pretty easy going, nothing really much bothers me, I tend to say stuff that really, I shouldn't at the time, and people do get a bit upset. There was this comment with Ben and Jerry being 'slappy' which the two of them spat their dummies out on, I find it quite funny to be honest: these two well respected climbers getting such a lip on, but at the end of the day who gives a monkey's what I say. But it does make a difference [being published] because it's there in black and white. A lot of people either got upset or thought it was hilariously funny.

You're all good friends now?

Best buddies now, yeah (laughs), we get on very well.

Do you think that if you'd come into climbing from a different angle, enjoying the climbing per se, rather than focussing on achievement and goals it would have endured longer?

I don't think so, no. I never really analysed why, but I got into climbing through hillwalking, and I got into hill walking just because I really enjoyed getting out into the outdoors. I find it a bit bizarre how the whole thing does link together. I enjoyed going out into the outdoors, a lot of camping, a lot of hillwalking, summer, winter, all over Scotland, in the mountains, and I did it because I enjoyed being out in the wilds, it's like another world, and that's how I got into climbing. But the better I got at climbing, the less I went out into the outdoors, and one day I did start scratching my head thinking 'it's a bit pants, this, I don't go climbing anymore', I don't go into the outdoors, I don't even know if I enjoy it that much, I don't have the craic, that was probably at the same time as I met my wife, and I just changed over in another direction. So I did come from a reasonable traditional grounding.

Do you still go walking?

I'd like to try to go out walking, I do enjoy going out on my own. It's quite difficult to do over the Peak District, it's not like Scotland, going out into the Cairngorms. We live literally two minutes drive from the Peak District, but I do very little of it, I'm not really sure why. It's one of these things, I'm sure one day you'll be a family man yourself, we've got fourteen employees, two little girls, a wife, and two cats to feed, it keeps you busy

With climbing, I was quite obsessive about it, and did it, and didn't do anything else, I just focussed on that, my focus, commendable or not, is now literally, entirely on the business, which pisses my wife of at times because I come home and talk about nothing but, so I'm learning to try and balance the two.

Do you think your children will go climbing?

The pair of them love it, I take them down to the climbing wall and they love it, they really do, I don't take them as often as I could and should, I think I'm being very selfish there because I don't have any interest in it any more, but again, I'm focussing entirely on the business, and I do spend a lot more time with the girls. It would be nice to team them up with kids of their own age so they can drive each other and motivate each other. You've got my conscience going now, I'll take them down to the climbing wall this evening…

As I left the comfort of Stuart's car, I couldn't help wondering whether it was a shame that such an obviously gifted climber became so disenchanted with climbing to completely give it up, or whether I had just listened to the most romantic true story I'd ever heard. The one thing I am sure of is that when climbing is condensed purely to a set of performance goals, the incorporeal element that that makes it so addictive and compelling is somehow lost, and I'm sure that Stuart Cameron is not alone.