The world’s foremost adventure climbing troubadour returns with a new video. Predictably, you’ll find plenty of signature nail-biting O’Driscoll climbs. You’ll also listen to the idiosyncratic Belgian play an even more irritating instrument than the pennywhistle.
I don’t even know what that thing is. At first, I thought it might be bagpipes. Then when I saw it, I wondered if it could be some wretched spawn of bagpipes and a recorder.
I’m no expert on the musical heritage of Europe, but either the music the instrument makes is as grating to my Western ears as anything I have ever heard, or our boy Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll is just really bad at playing it. (If you click back out of this window to look at the photo, note how far away from him the other person is standing.)
But, hey — it’s all in a day’s work for a musical big-wall poet, right? Whatever you think the music sounds like, you can’t knock O’Driscoll’s capacity for two things: adventure rock climbing and endearment.
Follow him up the strange, stubby pinnacles of Teplice, Czech Republic, as he explores both the present and past of one of Europe’s most traditionally rooted climbing areas.
(And if you’re reading this, Sean, please do not block my phone number.)
Runtime: 22.5 minutes
