A COUPLE who got engaged at the top of the country’s most famous crag will be talking about their climbing lives at Ambleside’s Festival of the Fells.

Richard and Angela Crabtree became a social media sensation among the UK’s rock-climbing fraternity when he chose a rather unusual spot to ask her to marry him - the top of Napes Needle on Great Gable.

“I was wondering why he didn’t put any chalk on his hands during the climb,” said Angela. “Then, when we got to the top, he opened up his chalk bag and pulled out a ring. I just screamed.”

So loudly, according to Richard, that climbers on the nearby Needle Ridge and Eagle’s Nest Ridge initially thought that someone had fallen. “When they realised what had happened they all cheered,” he said.

About 18 months later the couple, from Colne in Lancashire, married at tiny St Olaf’s Church in Wasdale.

And this summer they were back at the church for the anniversary of the wedding to celebrate one year of their marriage, and take a fond look at the little etching of Napes Needle in one of the church’s windows.

Richard and Angela have got a great story to tell about a pair of 40somethings who met camping, got into fell walking, then scrambling, then rock climbing, then Alpine mountaineering.

Meet them on Sunday September 25 at 4pm at the Copper Pot café in Church Street.