Seventeen years of hard work have finally paid off for Roy Bedford, who gets in touch with a story of publishing success from ‘a completely unexpected direction’.

Roy, Wakefield, a member of his local writing group The Wakefield Scribes, has a lifetime interest in mountaineering and when he retired from industry in 1990 he began to ‘sort out’ all the fascinating tales that made his hobby so absorbing.

He submitted the work to agents and publishers without success. ‘After four years of frustration I decided to self-publish,’ he explains, ‘and produced two volumes, at some cost to my bank balance.’

He managed to sell all the books printed and as he recouped most of his outlay much of his self-belief returned.
Things began to look more rosy when an agent accepted his third book but it proved to be a false dawn and to this day the book remains unpublished.

Luckily Roy has another consuming interest... the weather. ‘A working knowledge of this is essential to me as a mountaineer.

‘There were times when ignorance or complacency could have cost me my life, and my most exciting stories are invariably linked to the weather conditions at the time.’

Two years ago he decided to submit some work to the magazine Weather Eye at Coulsden, Surrey, and was delighted to see it published in the next issue.

‘After a second article the publisher wrote to me asking for more submissions which I was happy to provide.’

According to Roy they have now developed a ‘working relationship’ and he regularly writes a column or a page in the magazine.

‘I cannot express how thrilled I am. This was not the way it was meant to happen, but you never know which way fortune is going to take you.’.