I was back up on Ben Loyal in the far north of Scotland recently, filming for Alastair Lee and Brit Rock Films and helping tell the story of Franco Cookson’s incredible new route, But Nothing Is Lost, E12 7a.

I’d first been up there the year before with Al, filming Franco during one of his attempts on the route. Even getting to the cliff is a fair old mission. It’s several hours walking into a pretty remote part of the Highlands, and carrying camera kit, tripods, long lenses and drone batteries certainly doesn’t make the walk any shorter.

Franco Cookson (Chatting) and Al Lee (Filming)

Franco had been working on the route for four years, travelling all the way up from England to this remote corner of Scotland to try it. It’s a huge, intimidating blank slab in an absolutely incredible position on Ben Loyal, and this year he finally completed it. Al had asked me to accompany him to film the ascent but unfortunately I was working as a DOP on a three week documentary at the time.

Franco’s line starts on the right of the little bottom shelf and goes up the blank slab centre of this picture

Al was there to film Franco making the lead, capturing the culmination of those four years of effort. Franco later described the experience as surpassing anything he had experienced before in climbing and called the line “perfect, pure and simple”.

Reading Franco’s thoughts afterwards, though, it was interesting that the story wasn't simply about finally succeeding. After spending so much of his life pushing British trad climbing, he wrote that climbing new routes had become less about collecting achievements and more about “a communion with a place, a landscape and the people you share that experience with.”

Ben Loyal early evening after sunset. Tent is visible on the ridge

Ben Loyal is certainly a place where that makes sense. It feels properly remote up there. On a clear day you can look north towards the Atlantic and across towards Orkney, with an enormous amount of wild country around you and very little sign of anything else.

With Al travelling all the way from Sheffield, and me being relatively close by in Aviemore, he asked if I could head back up when the weather looked good and shoot some additional material for the film. The idea was to get aerials and timelapses of Ben Loyal and the surrounding landscape, along with detailed drone shots travelling up the line of the route itself.

As the story took place over four years, these shots should help give some context to Franco’s journey and show exactly where this route sits within the mountain and the landscape around it.

I kept an eye on the forecast, spotted what looked like a decent weather window and headed north with the drone kit, camping gear and a mate for company.

Because it was the middle of the Scottish summer, sunset was late and sunrise ridiculously early, so there wasn't much point walking all the way back down between them. We pitched the tent close to the summit of Ben Loyal and stayed up there overnight.

Myself with the DJI Mavic 4 Pro ( Creator combo, shoots in DJI All-I mode which is like ProRes RAW but with JPEGS rather than RAW Images, normal Mavic 4 Pros without the internal drives do not have this shooting option)

It turned out to be an amazing evening. We had a cracking sunset from high on the mountain, followed just a few hours later by sunrise and another chance to get the drone in the air.

Ben Loyal looking North with grag and Francos route is the clean vertical slab kind of central left on the crag.

The only slight flaw in the master plan was the wind getting up during the night. The tent spent most of the night flapping away enthusiastically and I think I managed about an hour or two of actual sleep. The walk back down carrying all the kit the following day therefore felt considerably longer than the walk up!

Still, there are worse places to spend a sleepless night.

Being high on Ben Loyal for both sunset and sunrise, with the whole landscape stretching out below us, was pretty special, and hopefully the footage will help give a sense of just how extraordinary and isolated the setting for Franco’s route really is.

It was a great little job to be part of and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Al puts together for this year's Brit Rock films.

And a massive congratulations to Franco. Four years of travelling, attempts, uncertainty and perseverance went into But Nothing Is Lost. Having been up there and seen the route and the place for myself, I can only imagine what it must have felt like to finally complete it.

Just after initial sunrise on Ben Loyal. Tent somewhere there:)

The finished film, Journey to the End of the Ego, will be part of the 2026 BritRock Film Tour and gets its world premiere at Sheffield Students’ Union Auditorium on Thursday 5 November at 7pm. It’ll be great to finally see what Al has put together from Franco’s four-year journey on Ben Loyal, and to see some of my footage up there on the big screen too.

The BritRock Film Tour then heads around the UK and further afield over the following months. You can see all the tour dates and buy tickets here:

https://britrockfilmtour.com/