In her early twenties, living in the city and missing the outdoors of her childhood, Anna Fleming discovered rock climbing. She found the physicality and focus of being on the rock immersive and addictive. Climbing offered a way back into her love of the natural world. She began to learn to climb on the gritstone escarpments of the Peak District. Over the following decade Anna went from a fearful novice to an accomplished, confident climber, leading challenging routes up some of the most breathtaking rockfaces in the country. Time on Rock is an account of this ten-year journey. Starting in the Peak District, Anna takes the reader on a climbing voyage across different rocks of the British Isles, from Yorkshire limestone to Lake District rhyolite, from the gabbro of the Cuillin ridge to the granite of the Cairngorm massif. As Roger Deakin swam through Britain's waters twenty years ago, Anna grips, belays and pivots her way across the country's volcanic and sedimentary rocks.

Climbing offers a different way to meet the natural world. It is a uniquely tactile experience of the landscape and one that offers both the closest view, of the climber pressed against a rock face, and the largest of vista, of the land viewed from the summit.