Hanging out at my mum’s in Bournemouth, has given me a great opportunity to re-visit my old climbing haunts, and today I met up with a couple of people who responded to my UKC lifts and partners post. I forgot how awful Bournemouth is for travelling across at rush hour, little known fact, is that when combined Bournemouth, Poole, Christchurch and Ferndown, is the 5th biggest urban area in the UK. Yet for some reason there isn’t a climbing wall anywhere, if only I had a £200000!
Anyway I managed to get to Swanage for the Wolfgang start in a cafe, meeting up with Mark and Iain. I had met Mark before, I think during his epic enchainment over 25 days of all the Hard Rock Routes, probably after he had his near epic on Cloggy’s White Slab. Iain was a wild card, although a worked grade of F7c on his UKC logbook, made me nervous, as would he be too much of a wad for mine and Mark’s more pedestrian aims. As it was he was fine, and we ended up doing some great routes, but before we headed out we had to decide where to climb.
I rather fancied heading to Dancing Ledge, as it has many great memories for me, it was the first place I climbed, it was the first place I ever lead, and it was the first place I ever climb F6a, and I hadn’t been here for what seemed like years. Fortunately Mark hadn’t been there, and Iain was relaxed about venue, so we headed down into a perfect suntrap.
Descending into the quarry, the memories came flooding back of how I got started climbing. I was studying A-levels at the time at Bournemouth School, and at some point I had come down here climbing with school, psyched I brought Allen Fyffe’s and Iain Peters’ Handbook of Climbing, it was my bible I cherish this book with my life and practice the ropework, and studied gear placements endlessly, it was probably why I nearly failed my A-Levels, and climbing certainly contributed to my Desmond two two at University.
It seems incredible that armed with just that book we achieve so much, more incredible was 15 years later and I would have Iain Peters as my boss when I was on the Instructor Scheme at Plas Y Brenin, and would sit on a committee on coaching climbing with the very lovely and softly spoken Fyffy. What I have achieved in those years when I look back has been incredible, if you had suggested back then that I would right my own book on climbing at some point I and most people I know would have laughed you out of the room.
Other than that book and a few karabiners we had no other climbing equipment, but at the age of seventeen, I got something far more important than a rope or a rack, the one thing that I had waited forever to get, a driving license and my first ticket to freedom. When my mum would be stupid enough to loan me her car, and I only crashed it once!
However, Atholl my partner in crime back in those first forays onto the rock, and I still didn’t have a rack, but we had a plan. That plan consisted of robbery, and it was going to require cunning, guile and potentially getting dragged in front of the headmaster, a stern authoritarian scot who ruled the school with an iron fist. You see hidden in the back of the games store was a shinny rack, ropes and harnesses, all we had to do was find a way to lift it from there and get it to my mums car without anyone getting wise to our heist.
I think made the climbing seem easy, as we used to turn up to school every Friday with a larger empty bag and before the first bell went sneak in to the games office borrow the keys, empty the store and get the gear past prying eyes and safely to the car. Then after a weekend of epics we had to sneak everything back.
One Monday morning our cover was almost blow, as Atholl that weekend had been lead a route that was probably barely severe. As he went up he place a rock 8 sideways in a horizontal break, and declared to the crag that this piece was bomber, so bomber in fact he’d drop a bus on it. Moving up into the steeper finishing groove, my heart stopped as at first his foot popped and he flailed to get it back on the hold, no sooner was that foot back in place and the other went, then one hand and then he was cart wheeling down onto the slab below, where he bounced out and hit the ground in front of me.
Being a true friend, I saw he get up, and notice there was no blood and did the only thing I could think of and start laughing hysterically, and when I got that under control just utter “A bus Hey!”. Everyone else at the crag was more concerned than I was, so embarrassed we headed home.
On the Monday though, Atholl had to tell the games teacher, Mr. Gibson that he could play rugby that week because he had hurt his hand. No I don’t know whether you have ever told a games teacher you can’t play in the first 15, but you might as well have shit in there mouths. An explanation was demanded immediately, Atholl thinking on his feet, he was a great bullshitter, later going onto to be a cars salesman, until he wrote a Renault 5 Williams off that he was driving 2om from the back of the transporter to the forecourt. So almost instantly, he said he fell over drunk, and to be honest this was more than plausible and the game continue until we finally finished our A-levels, and Mr. Gibson ordered us both to the games office.
If there was one thing worse than being called in front of the headmaster it was being summon by the Games department, as whilst capital punishment was technically illegal, I think they knew that neither my or Atholl’s parents would have objected to some impact counseling be inflicted on their darling little angels.
“Right, you two where are my cams, karabiners and ropes, if they’re not back by tomorrow there’s going to be a problem”
“Em, sorry I have no idea”
“Don’t play that game with me, I know you’ve been sneaking them out of the store every weekend for the last term”
The game was up, well there hadn’t been a game all along, Mr. Gibson had known everything, but using the words of a modern day politician by turning that blind eye he had plausible deniability.
“They’ll be back tomorrow, and… erm… thank you”
We returned them the next day, and he invited us to help out on the year 9 camp, it was the first instruction I had ever done. He let us rig the crag, and manage the session, carefully checking our every move; I loved it and probably decided then that a career in outdoor pursuits was for me. A few months later I did my SPA and ML training.
Those early days we climbed at several crags across the south west, from Swanage to Dartmoor. Those first climbs with Atholl captured an adventurous spirit that was developing in me. One of the hardest routes I lead before I headed to Bangor was Date with a Frog (F6a) on Dancing Ledge.
So today, I headed back and got on that route, a route that took me three attempts before I managed to climb it some twenty years ago. Today it was a warm up, still not easy, but its amazing with so much rock having past through my hands since that those moves seemed friendlier and my technique a million miles away from where it was back then, and so it was I walked up memory lane.
Anyway a massive thanks to Mark and Iain for letting me come climbing with them today, it was ace. Although I narrowly failed on a F6c+, we still got about 5 or 6 routes climbed.
