In his 'imaginative' epistle in Mountain 131, Rowland Edwards states that a route of mine, Burning Gold, was the 'main inspiration' for his subsequent bolting and drilling activities on Cornish granite. This is a perverse and cowardly assertion and I object to being associated in any way with the rancorous mess the Edwards have created for themselves in Cornwall.
Burning Gold was an on-sight, free ascent of an old aid route named Scimitar, which was referred to in Bob Moulton's Chair Ladder guide but with no first ascent details. We may never know who placed the bolts; not that it matters except to people desperate to find a scapegoat for their own follies. When Chris King and I climbed the route in 1978 there was a frail, rusted bolt on the first pitch and two sounder ones at the belay. These were mentioned in the original description and in Pete O'Sullivan's 1984 guidebook. We had no hammer or pegs with us (let alone bolts) and therefore didn't add to or alter this fixed gear in any way. All the routes Chris and I did in Cornwall in that period - Burning Gold, Evil Eye, Cain, The Leer and Black Sapper- were climbed 'ground up' with a nut rack.
The origin of the fourth bolt on Burning Gold is not some guilty secret between myself and past guidebook writers. The bizarre truth is that Rowland placed it himself, and told me so last Easter in the presence of Eddie Cooper. I accepted then that his motives for placing the bolt were 'public spirited' (the old one probably having rusted away) and never imagined that it would be used as a basis for insinuations against myself. [1]