Gordon Thomas Orr

Climbing Up the Sunshine Mountain Gordon Thomas Orr

Climbing up the Sunshine Mountain is a light-hearted generally upbeat story with plenty of feel-good factor to offset any blues caused by normal gloomy daily subjects such as climate-change, brexit and terrorism. It reflects on the human desire to succeed and do good, the fragility of self-assurance and the knife-edge balancing act of tolerance necessary for successful male/female relationships. It is about a group of people who were contemporaries at school in Lancashire and who have achieved varying amounts of success in later life. Mountaineering, flying and driving form a backdrop against which the undercurrents of their different jobs, ambitions and emotional desires churn. Established loyalties change causing inner turmoil and guilt while companions are chopped and changed. It is set in the present near Burscough Bridge, a small farming village boasting two railway stations and a canal. It is a growing modernizing community as people move out from the student-swamped town of Ormskirk. Local residents proud of their rural roots call themselves 'Burscough Billies' and the local Mountaineering club is named 'Burscough HillBillies.'A riotous wedding is followed by a flight over Scotland on a mountaineering expedition to the dangerous north-face cliffs of Ben Nevis in winter. What could possibly go wrong?