Internationally acclaimed mountaineer and ex-coal miner Andy Cave is set to appear here on Friday 13th November, with his gripping ‘an audience with…’ style lecture show Learning To Breathe, presented by adventure-based speakers specialists, Speakers from the Edge.

Andy Cave is a figurehead for British Mountaineering, with more than 20 years of desperate routes to his name. Aged just 20, he became one of the youngest mountaineers ever to climb the North Face of the Eiger, an achievement made all the more remarkable as just 4 years earlier, Andy was working 3000 feet underground at Grimethorpe Colliery in South Yorkshire.

Andy’s story of transition from Yorkshire coal miner to one of the UK’s best climbers is a gripping and compelling tale. Traditionally a gentleman's sport, a young coal miner from Barnsley was an unlikely mountaineer. His journey from the blackened grime of the pit to the breath-taking Himalayan summits is both moving and startling. His gritty insight into the turmoil of the miner’s strike - which ravaged his local community - and his audacious decision to break with family tradition and seek out a life of adventure in the mountains is a tale of tremendous courage and ambition.

Sponsored by Lowe Alpine, Andy Cave’s Learning to Breathe takes the audience on a tremendous human journey through his experiences of the miner’s strike in 1984-85 to his traumatic expedition to the perilous North Face of Changabang in the Himalayas in 1997 - an expedition in which his climbing partner paid the ultimate price. His inner-turmoil and eventual decision to return to the mountains is one of the most stirring tales of modern mountaineering. Set against a backdrop of the Himalaya, Patagonia and Alaska, Andy explores some of the severest challenges modern Alpinism can pose in his understated but humorous style.

Andy comments “This passion of mine started long ago when, as an inquisitive child, I scrambled up the local pit muckstack. Later, as a teenage coal miner disillusioned with the world of dirt and darkness, I had fallen in love with real mountain climbing.”

For tickets and further information please contact box office on 01796 484626 or buy online