Aug 10: Touching the Void (2003) dir. Kevin Macdonald

This is a classic tale of friendship and survival. I saw it at the cinema in King's Lynn when it came out, and the original book was used as the basis for quite a few school assemblies at the time. 

I've also met Joe Simpson up in Derbyshire previously, one of the protagonists of the film.

It tells the story of a climbing accident in Peru and one of the most famous of all decisions which had to be taken by Joe's climbing partner Simon Yates.

The book introduces the dramatic landscapes of the mountain range where the action takes place. Joe and his climbing partner are in Peru climbing Siula Grande.

I won't add spoilers here, although the story is very well known.

Some years ago, my colleague Claire Kyndt and I developed a unit of work based on the Scholastic version of the book.

The film and the original book is very sweary, so the school version is preferable for this purpose.

There are plenty of landscape features to explore.

Here are some links to the resources that we put together. These were originally developed for World Book Week, when the geography department joined other departments in developing literacy work.

Touching the Void Literacy Work from GeoBlogs