Space Below My Feet

by Gwen Moffat

In 1945, when Gwen Moffat was in her twenties, she deserted her post as a driver and dispatch rider in the Army and went to live rough in Wales and Cornwall, climbing and living on practically nothing. She hitchhiked her way around, travelling from Skye to Chamonix and many places in between, with all her possessions on her back, although these amounted to little more than a rope and a sleeping bag.When the money ran out, she worked as a forester, went winkle-picking on the Isle of Skye, acted as the helmsman of a schooner, and did a stint as an artist's model. And always there were the mountains, drawing her away from a "proper" job.Throughout this unique story, there are acutely observed accounts of mountaineering exploits as Moffat tackles the toughest climbs and goes on to become Britain's leading female climber—and the first woman to qualify as a mountain guide.

Genres: Nonfiction, Adventure, Memoir, Autobiography, Climbing, Travel, Mountaineering

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Gwen Moffat’s main interests are wilderness areas and the genesis of murder, and all her books have featured one or the other. Moffat has writtenboth travel books and novels.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

I was recommended this as part of the 12 Book Challenge and I think it was probably a poor pick on my part. Ms Moffat seems to have spent her time drifting around Britain doing odd jobs and climbing mountains, which I'm sure was deeply rewarding, but it comes across in an oddly affectless way. I'm not engaging with her personality at all, and for me, the writing isn't evocative enough to make the journey vivid. I think if you knew the landscapes already, or if you love mountaineering, or if you knew who she was (apparently a climber of repute), this would be a different reading experience, but I just can't find anything to attach to here. DNF at 40%, hey ho.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwen Moffat’s blithe mountaineering memoir is an extraordinary and fascinating read if, like me, you’re a person who feels the fear and definitely doesn’t do it anyway. Moffat yearned for excitement and adventure, a tendency that I find very difficult to understand. To extreme sports enthusiasts I say this: for the ultimate adrenaline rush, try having a three hour anxiety attack during which you can’t tell whether you are seriously ill or just going mad. Not much fun, but definitely gets the pulse racing. Anyway, Moffat recounts her amazing exploits on mountains and in wildernesses across Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, she deserted from the ATS in order to live off the land and learn to climb in Wales. Throughout the book, Moffat exhibits an offhand yet incredible personal resilience. She lived in barns, tents, and hovels with equanimity. She was perpetually broke, yet never short of energy and ideas. Although the main theme of the book is mountaineering, at which she was a pioneer, I was more interested in the rest of her unconventional life. It felt like an insight into a vanished world, in which someone could sleep in a farmer’s barn if they helped with milking or squat in a cottage with no electricity, plumbing, or running water. Moffat clearly had a strong circle of friends that she periodically lived with and regularly climbed with, but what really came through was her intense independence. Getting married and having a baby barely crimped this independence, although she does observe sadly that poverty becomes squalid when you have a child to care for.

The writing flows along in a generally upbeat and energetic way, leaping from anecdote to anecdote. Moffat reflects only briefly on her emotions and relationships, preferring to concentrate on what she did than how she felt. A number of her adventures are horrifying, including one occasion when she narrowly escaped being raped. She is remarkably frank about this and other situations when men endangered her. By contrast, her descriptions of landscapes and wildlife are beautiful and uplifting. Despite being focused on her climbing goals, Moffat was always willing to stop in order to help an injured animal and she admired the beauty around her while enjoying the physical challenge.

‘Space Below My Feet’ may not have been the best thing to read during a cold snap, as it includes so many scenes of climbers shivering amid snow and ice. It’s clear that Moffat often suffered considerable discomfort and pain for her art. She certainly makes climbing seem like an art, although even her rhapsodies did not convince me to try it. The photos in the middle of the book show her to have had a cheerful smile and impressive shoulder muscles. Although she doesn’t self-consciously remark upon it, her life was pretty wild for the late 1940s and 50s: featuring vegetarianism, naturism, and communal living, not to mention all the camping and climbing. Her memoir isn’t quite like any other I’ve ever read and I enjoyed it, perhaps because her experiences provided insight into adventurous activities I'm happy to steer clear of.

[Nicola Whitbread · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Life was the sound of crampons scrunching the snow, the lights of the refuge coming up, and Life was the power and the glory of all the mountains I had ever climbed.”

Gwen Moffat was Britains first female qualified mountain guide and was the leading female climber of the time. She’s been a member of the Pinnacle Club longer than anyone, 74 years, and is also their oldest member. Space Below My Feet is an incredible, wild and unconventional story of her career and climbs. She lives and breaths the mountains, and for chunks of her life she lives in poverty and instability to afford her the maximum amount of time on rock.

How she lives her life would raise a few eyebrows now, let alone in the 1940s-50s. She is unforgiving of others opinions and has forged her career in a male-dominated sport by being completely badass and respected among the climbing scene. Gwen first felt the pull of the mountains as an ATS driver at the end of the war, and she deserted to live rough in Wales and Cornwall to walk and climb. Her story only gets more fascinating as she rents old cottages, or sleeps in barns or outside, working an array of jobs, plus restoring an old boat with a baby daughter and being quite open about her weakness for good looking, muscly mountain men 😂

Gwen is an icon for outdoorsy women.

[Marianna Donnart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a book for me? I have tried and persevered with this book but eventually gave up as there isn't much of a storyline, I found it more to be a collection of memories of climbs across Europe. Well written for sure, but as I am not a mountaineer I can't say I found it gripping (no pun intended).

[Leilani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book in my local library browsing the rock climbing section as I've been bouldering indoors for quite a few months now and have also tried top-roping indoors with ambitions to begin climbing outdoors on the real stuff. It was in looking for instruction books and stumbled across this autobiographical gem, read the blurb, and was like - woa, I need to read this. Particularly as an autobiography of a woman was the reason I needed to read it, not only would it have been mind-blowing today to hear of what Gwen Moffat had achieved and done but to have done it in the 1940's and 1950's was just astounding.

It's one of those books that reminds you that there are a million ways to live a life, there really is, you might have to sacrifice a heck of a lot to live the one you want, but it's up to you to decide about whether it's worth it. That's a very very refreshing thought when I feel that I've somehow been offered a very quite frankly dull example of what my life should look like as a person nearing their mid twenties... Mortgages ain't my thing, they really aren't, maybe that will change one day but for now I'm just embracing my sniffing at them because it's just how I feel now, shrug. That doesn't mean I need to go and desert from service like Gwen, or live in boat, or float from cottage to cottage about the UK and hitch-hike everywhere I go like her but it means that I've read a mighty fine example of a woman in the 1940s onwards who lived exactly as she pleased. Exactly. Regardless of the things she had to sacrifice for it - comfort, security, etc. That's powerful and admirable. This book has made me realise and think also about who is it in life I have admiration for, who is it that inspires me? People like Gwen do.

She is a beautifully clean writer, she is one of those writers that doesn't waste a word, her descriptions precise and if you enjoy mountains or already climb outdoors then the final quarter of this book will be a delight as she recalls big climbs whilst visiting Europe and the Alps. I found this section a little less rewarding than the others because I have not led or seconded outdoors and so not only a bit of the jargon - from mantelshelf to vibrams - is lost on me but also the imagery of it. She describes multiple pitches, pitons, precise moves which I'm not knowledgable enough yet to see with my mind's eye but they were fascinating all the same, especially glimpses of how Gwen felt on certain climbs with little sparse nuggets on why it is she climbs or how it makes her feel.

I find her a really likable narrator of her life, very honest, she does not at all shy away from telling instances of where she lost her nerve on the rock, where she had been fool hardy before, where she suddenly had it pointed out to her that her technique was sloppy. She simply relays it and explains it not really caring for what the reader thinks of her about these admissions which rather fit the rest of the way she appears to have lived her life to an outsider.

What I really enjoyed the most in this book and never wanted to end did seem to be more, reading at this time - as someone not yet accustomed to outdoors climbing and the jargon - the description of how she lived her life day to day. The lengths she went to in order to be able to fund her obsession with climbing, mountains and the outdoors, that level of commitment. She wrote about so many other things than climbing for the most of this book - about books she was reading, about food, about her relations to men, as a woman, about friendships, about depression, about her affinity with animals. It's clear that she is a very observive writer with an interest and gusto for everything from human psychology to literature.

I'd highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the outdoors, but first and foremost to any women I know, to me this is a book first and foremost is about a woman's love for life, a love for the things she, and she alone, decided are worth loving.

[Daria Tyuneva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I watched a little video called Project Moffat and thought I'd love to learn more about this awesome lady. I really wanted to like her autobiography but it just didn't quite do it for me - I loved the general description of her life but climbing parts were sometimes confusing and didn't provide enough information to decipher the content or to judge the dangers of climbs even though it's not the first climbing book I've read. If not for the abrupt writing, it would have been a lot more enjoyable read.

[Abra Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gwen Moffat is a young girl who falls into mountain climbing in the latter 1940s after the war ends. She's from Great Britain. She becomes so enthralled by rock climbing that it becomes her sole focus. Any job or living arrangement is taken only to satisfy her craving to climb. She lives in tents and often sleeps under the stars; sometimes with very little food as well. She hitchhikes often to get to her destinations. Surprisingly, she only encounters rapscallions once in those journeys. She takes odd jobs here and there, including writing as a journalist to support herself. It reminds me of the 1960's hippies in the US. She becomes very accomplished and even climbs in the Alps. It's a fascinating tale. My only negative about this book is that in her zeal to describe her climbs, she often skips over any personal details so it's a bit confusing. She married twice in the book and has a child but so little is said about these events that you almost wonder if they happened.

[Joseph Wenman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. You probably have to be a climber to get it, but if you are, it’s a truly inspiring story of adventure.

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining memoir, roughly covering the years 1945-1955, of Britain's first female professional mountain guide. There is no deeper truth, just a frugal, bohemian life singularly devoted to climbing crags and mountains. Moffat was an accomplished writer and her prose is polished and poised. There are sections of great beauty, capturing the poetry of the climbing life to perfection:

"Above us a groove ran up the wall. This is followed for about twenty-five feet when, with sensational abruptness, the route breaks out to the right, following a rough crack to the pinnacle. But the crack - which is sensational - isn't hard. The crux comes near the top of those twenty-five feet. There are runners in the crack: tiny things to take a loop of nylon line. With your toes balanced on excrescences and your right hand on the rock, with infinite delicacy you take the sling off your head and place it round a knob. Everything is in slow motion, and perhaps, this day, every movement in this moment of time is perfection. You bring up the rope, clip it one-handed in the carabiner, the nylon drops again with the faintest jerk on your waist - and the second breathes a little easier as he stares upwards in the deep silence. And so on, stepping slowly, aware more than ever now of that silence, through which comes, perhaps, the cry of a kestrel. Near the top of the groove there seems to be no more holds, but you know there must be, so you look for wrinkles, and you find them; you choose the biggest and you step up and, amazingly, they are adequate. They bring you to the crack, the big, rough friendly crack which leads you over all that exposure to the flake and the belay. From there you look down at the route with the eyes of a lover, and across the gully you catch a movement. You hear a cry again and there is the kestrel slipping through the sun shafts in the amphitheatre ... "

The occasional exaltation is nicely balanced by amusing vignettes, for example of Moffat trying to rescue a sheep from an exposed ledge, or, towards the end of the book, flogging her overloaded 1932 Morris Minor across Welsh mountain passes. In between we learn about the author's domestic concerns and her budding career as a writer.

Most of the action is situated in Wales and Scotland and it helps to have a rough idea of the topography as the narrative is littered with exotic toponyms referring to the innumerable cliffs, buttresses and arêtes climbed by Moffat. A few chapters deal with her climbing adventures in the Alps (Chamonix, Zermatt, Dolomites).

All in all an enjoyable and frank selfportrait of a strong-willed woman pursuing her passion in a societal context that did not unequivocally support those ambitions.

[Duncan M Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing and fascinating story of an indomitable woman who, without any obvious political or feminist views, simply went ahead and lived the life she chose, as she chose, without concession to others. As a single mother, a deserter from the army and climber, she took whatever jobs would pay for her climbing and for her daughter's schooling. That she finally settled upon a career as a writer shows in her beautiful, clear writing. The story feels slightly dashed, as if she thought her life undeserving of attention, and the sudden end, with Gwen descending from a climb in in the Alps, left me wanting to know more, much more about this amazingly tough and self effacing woman who, in summer in Wales and in Cumbria, climbed in bare feet, a pair of shorts and an old lace blouse.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time round I read this as a climbing book. This time it felt something more - gave me a feel for the decades I was born and grew up. It has a devastating truthful feel, both about the climbing and her life. She obviously inspires and gives great loyalty and at the same time the single minded drive to climb is not always comfortable to live with - either for herself or others.

To the (few) reviewers who complained that the number of pages dedicated to domestic life and bringing up a child were insufficient - I just hope you were even more judgmental towards all the memoires written by men who hardly mention domestic life. There is more to life than mother or fatherhood. On the other hand I'll bet Gwen Moffat's mother and daughter are awesome people too.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read for women in the outdoor community. Gwen's story is a superb tribute to mountaincraft, youth and feminism. Although originally written in 1961 and based throughout the 1940s and 50s, this book transcends time and is still magnificently relevant to contemporary climbing culture. Gwen's memoir takes you from the rocky crags of Snowdonia, all the way to the cullins of Skye, beauty of Cornwall and over to the Alpine snow-caps. This book is an absolute masterpiece and Gwen's pioneering legacy provides the foundations for mountaineering today.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Closer to 2.5. I enjoyed it but I felt like I needed to be a serious climber and I needed to know European mountains to really get behind it.

[Ollie Ollie Oxenfree · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a shame I can't give this book a higher rating. Though it's well-written, "Space Below My Feet" has no through-story to hold the reader's attention. After the first 100 pages, it becomes a monotonous recitation of climb after climb after climb. That's 2/3rds of the book, which means finishing it was quite a slog. Moffat is obviously a remarkable person and I enjoyed learning about her exploits; I also appreciate her forthrightness in regards to her capabilities, emotions, and vulnerabilities. However, all the appreciation in the world can't make the latter portion of the book engaging.

Unless you are an avid climber/mountaineer who enjoys reading descriptions of climbs that mostly just go well and lack any suspense, I would not really recommend this book. I finished it only because it was this month's pick in our climbing book club.

[Helen Futty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was such a fascinating insight into the world of mountaineering in the 40s & 50s! It was really interesting to see similarities and differences between techniques then and now.

I experienced all the emotions as we followed Gwen through her climbing experiences - excitement as she worked her way up the difficulties of climbing in the UK, fear as she progressed to eye wateringly terrifying Alpine climbing, sadness as she braved shocking weather for months only with a tent.

At times the stories felt a tad repetitive, and the writing style is not super technical - these are my only critiques of the book.

All in all, this book made me really psyched to get outdoors and climb more!

[Vera · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a highly enjoyable book, but mostly for the niche of readers like me, who enjoy climbing narratives. Gwen is an incredible woman (if seemingly a bit... peculiar?), and her adventures seem almost unbelievable to a reader in 2024. She's a vagabond, an adventurer, an excellent climber, seeker of new heights and companions, fierce defender of animals. Not to mention the first woman in the UK to qualify as a Mountain Guide. Her book is an important milestone in climbing literature, and I'm glad I came across it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just after WW2, Gwen Moffat deserted from military service to go rambling, climbing and adventuring around the UK and Europe. She's fascinating, especially considering her lifestyle (a woman choosing to travel alone with little to no money) would still be quite radical now. Despite her slightly detached narrative style, this memoir is definitely worth the time - even for people like me who are much better at reading about climbing than actually climbing.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely insane cool woman, someone my father would have idolised definitely (probably he does actually). Incredible “do it scared” mentality which is definitely inspiring to me rn.. the book was typically British stuff upper lip and didn’t touch on her feelings at all which I would have enjoyed but hearing about her unconventional life was enough to enjoy.. interesting to read the differences in climbing mentality between her and reinhold messner

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and a good read

Being a climber and a fan of climbing books and accounts I was surprised I hadn't heard of Gwen until a Red bull film. I immediately picked up the book and enjoyed the insight into British climbing back then. Her accounts of climbing in Europe were interesting too and as climbing becomes more mainstream it's good of to take a look at its roots.

[KP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gwen Moffat is hard as nails in this book. If you want tales of someone who offhandly mentions sweeping the hail off the handholds on a long climb, and dipping in glacial pools all year round, then this is the book for you.
I wish I had noticed the glossary in the back earlier, there are a lot of climbing terms that I wasn't familiar with.

[Jewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very entertaining read that puts you right into the mountains with Gwen as she climbs. When I finished the book I was sad that it didn't just continue forever explaining the love and hate that's involved with climbing.

[Rebeccajb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some parts of this are probably best suited to people with a really good grasp of climbing, as there were some chapters where I found it hard to visualise what she was describing, but on the whole really enjoyable.

[Bex Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pioneering both the dirtbag lifestyle and women being bad ass in the hills.

Only read if you're interested in mountaineering. Especially good during this pandemic, when trying to find inspiration on the home turf

[Jenny Editor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating insight into climbing and mountaineering from a pioneering woman climber. I loved the early post-war years especially, climbing in bare feet with hemp ropes, and the madcap and frankly terrifying high jinks on her first and subsequent Alpine trips. Fabulous read.

[Nel Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gwen Moffat tells of a fascinating and interesting life that is well worth reading about, however it’s very much a collection of memories and detailed descriptions of climbs which can be hard to follow at points especially if the reader doesn’t have much knowledge of trad climbing

[Stuart Moodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly a book of its time, but also a wonderful account of a pioneering woman and her exploits in the mountains of Wales, Scotland and the Alps. Beautiful descriptions of mountains and climbing and an interesting account of life post WW2. Definitely would recommend.

[Joyce Godsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific exciting autobiography.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Live to climb. Dirtbag lifestyles before they were even a thing...

I heart Gwen Moffat

[Deb · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought l would love this book, l read reviews and thought it was a book l would enjoy. I just couldn't get into it, maybe l need to know more about climbing and the words they use in climbing.

[Georgia Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gwen is amazing. She lived a wild life. I love seeing her in the short film 'Operation Moffat'
I liked it, but I wanted to really love it.