Egret!
We've just got back from a few days on holiday in one of my favourite places in the world - the Gower (where else!). We had T's mum and dad with us for a couple of days and went for a walk up the valley leading to Three Cliffs Bay, a beautiful wetland landscape.
I was walking beside T's mum when we saw a white bird take flight, I didn't recognise it but T's mum suggested it might be an Egret. A quick stop to get the bird book and the bins out of my bag and the sighting was confirmed. I was very happy as I've never seen one (knowingly) so a bit of a tick for the twitcher inside me. What I hear you say? You never told us you were a twitcher (or maybe I did but I can't be bothered to check back on previous blogs to confirm)!
It all started with the climbing of course - after spending a certain amount of time at cliffs, especially sea cliffs, one can't help but be aware of all the interesting birds that are around and from there it is just a hop, skip and jump to carrying a bird identification handbook and a pair of binoculars in your bag in case you see anything interesting. Something I haven't managed yet is deciding how to formalise my collecting instincts in this field. Apparently if you are a really serious twitcher you can get tick lists that you fill out obsessively with details of the birds you collect see. I'm not ready yet for this full blown twitching mania but the thought occurred to me that I could blog it instead. Then it would also be a way to keep fueling this blog. So there you go - I saw my first Egret the other day.
On to other things and of course it's going to be an OCR. A report of a recent trip to the Culm Coast where I yet again failed to climb Solid Air, not that I tried and failed, rather I didn't even get close (OK I saw it from a distance). There had been a serious accident on the cliff it is on recently, I suspect on that very climb though don't know as the details are shrouded in mystery, and the whole thing has developed a bit of bad juju for me. So anyway I didn't climb Solid Air but I did climb the awesome Wreckers' Slab (or just Wreckers' in climbing shorthand).
This, like Solid Air, is a climb I'd looked at ever since getting a copy of the West Country guide book for Christmas about four years ago. The description in the guide starts "One of the longest, most alluring and serious VS climbs in the West Country...". (ed. VS is Very Severe, a climbing grade before (of course) Hard Very Severe).
I'd wanted to climb it for years but left my house at 6.00 a.m. one Saturday morning still unsure in my mind. For one thing the route has a reputation, as the guide suggests, for being "serious". In climbing parlance this means that you shouldn't take the route lightly, because the consequences of any errors are likely to be serious. For this particular route this means if you get the tides wrong, or the amount of time it will take you to climb it, you'll be in for some fun. The route also has more than it's fair share of loose rock - and you don't want to a) throw any of that on anyone below you b) trust your life to any gear which relies on rock you can't trust c) pull on any hold to find that suddenly neither it, nor you, are now attached to the cliff anymore. For another I am still only climbing intermittently and confidence and flow are both affected if you are not in the habit of climbing. Lastly the partner I had lined up hadn't been replying to my emails. For a route like this the partner is crucial as you will be trusting them that much more than on some easily accessible roadside crag. The guy I had in mind was Dave B (not Dave the Legend of the Mountains) but the other Dave from this blog when we climbed the nine pitch monster of Slanting Buttress Ridge Route on Lliwedd together. Other Dave is a pretty experienced mountaineer who, despite his fondness for vulture masks and driving to a CD of the Red Army Choir ("Our Rockets are Always Ready" being a *highlight*), I would be prepared to do this route with. In the event I pulled into the campsite at 8.30 a.m to find him there and apologetic as he wasn't expecting me so early. It turns out he had been replying to my emails, just I hadn't been getting his replies for some reason.
We spent the Saturday climbing at Vicarage Cliff where I had been before - it's a nice spot with amenable single pitch slab climbs and it was good to unwind a bit and get my body and mind used to climbing and ropework whilst thinking through whether I was prepared to commit to Wreckers'. A reality check arrived early though when I was asked to set up the abseil rope off of the top (you can't walk down when you get to the top of the climbs). I wasn't asked because of any particular expertise but merely because I was in the right place to set the rope up at the time. It was sobering to suddenly find myself rigging a system that not just me but others, including several novices, would be trusting their lives to. It's not hard to rig an abseil - just tie a few knots - but you sure as hell want to make sure you do it right, especially with novices who would not spot if you had done something wrong. Anyway the day passed off very pleasantly, including an early retirement for me when I walked off to a nearby headland to see if I could spot some sea birds. Instead I found myself watching a few of the others get wet feet as they misjudged the tide and had to wade back to terra firma at the end of their last climb. Once the threat of drowning had passed I had a very good chuckle at them!
During the day I vacillated - at times committed to climbing Wreckers', at others I'd made up my mind to call it off and go for a walk instead. In the pub that night beer fuelled ambitions and everything seemed easy. Alone in my tent listening to Hartland's church bells at 4.00 a.m. I questioned what possible motive I could have for being here and doing this.
The dawn of day brought new courage and my internal compass settled on "go for it", Dave seemed oblivious to my internal dialogue and a last minute recruit to the team, French William, oozed enthusiasm despite his inexperience. Our start was inauspicious with Dave forgetting his boots (but luckily remembering this after a few minutes drive) and me missing the turn to the crag. Eventually we got there and began the walk in - a tiring 45 minute walk up the coast over a couple of steep sided valleys.
The first glimpse of the climb was intimidating in exactly the same way that seeing the Devil's Slide on Lundy was. This thing was big! I would guess the photo below is taken from about a kilometre away:
Weirdly on seeing it my confidence waxed and Dave's seemed to wane. Both of us were buoyed by William who expressed nothing but radiant enthusiasm. We walked round to the top and the fought our way down to the beach at the bottom past all manner of spikey plants and over all sorts of horrible shale.
Dave had the first lead and despatched it without too much wimpering ("Have you found the piton?" I shout "Yes, and a more godawful piece of rusted junk I've never seen" he shouted back) and before long the rope was tugging at my waist and I was off - climbing and climbing. Another thing about this climb is that all the pitches are long - about 40 metres. Consider that the height of an average storey is about 3 metres, so by the time you get to the top of a 40 metre pitch it's like standing on top of a 12 storey building or so. When I reached him at the top of the first pitch Dave was standing on a small foot ledge and I desperately tried to override my brain's attempts to lose me in total panic. If I looked at the ground my perspective did that funny thing you see in some films where the foreground zooms in and the background zooms out. Thankfully the rituals of swapping the lead rack over and sorting the ropes out distracted me and as soon as William had joined us I was away and any unease was lost in the glorious single minded focus of climbing. The pitch headed up a few metres to a band of overhangs, the hardest climbing of the route, but after one or two slightly tenuous moves I was pulling over them and up onto the slab above them.
Me (or my arse) about to go through the overhangs:
What followed was glorious. The climbing was easy and the position sensational. There was no desperate searching for holds, or climbing back down for a rest before having another go. Simply look up and find nice in-cut hold for hand, test it to make sure it is not loose, look down and find obvious foot hold and then up, up, up. I paused after about 25 metres to shout down "This is awesome!" to the guys below. It's always a good sign when you find yourself enjoying the climbing in the moment. I kept expecting it to get harder and it just didn't and suddenly I was at the belay - from afar it was hard to tell what it was like but up close it was marvellous. A nice big comfy sandy ledge to sit on and good gear placements for the belay. I made everything ready and sat back and soaked up the ambience as I belayed the others up - I was sat 80 metres up a cliff above a beautiful view, and the back of the climb was broken and what the hell I didn't need to do any more leading as Dave would lead the next pitch anyway. I had time to ponder the ants who emerged from my sandy ledge - what is their universe like with their home up here, living their busy ant lives with occasional interruptions from passing humans? Thoughts of how we must appear thus to anyone who cared to look down from on high on us.
Here's a photo taken of us by some friends who were in the vicinity. You can make us out but only if you know exactly where to look. Look at the purple line on this one first - the dots marks the belays:
Now look at the same places as the dots and you might just be able to make out the white dots of two helmets a the second belay and the dot of an orange helmet below us at the first. I may have mentioned it's a big climb!
The last pitch passed without drama and it was handshakes, snacks and greedy slurps from water bottles at the top.
William let on that this was only the fourth time he'd climbed outside. Dave and I fell about - for one thing he'd impressed both of us with his calm competence so much the day before that we'd both independently come to the conclusion we'd like to have him along. For another as Dave said "I've been psyching myself up for this route for years" and he'd just strolled up it on his fourth ever trip outdoors. True we did everything for him - all he had to do was climb and remove the gear we put in but it was some achievement none the less and it was a great pleasure to have his company on the climb. I like to think it is a very good memory of the UK that he will take home with him to France!
I'll put this photo in as well. A cream tea at the lovely Vicarage Tea Rooms by the car park. This was taken on the Saturday, sadly it was shut by the time we got there after Wreckers' on the Sunday.
I was tingling with the buzz of the climb for a week or so afterwards. The questions about why I was there when I could be at home doing family stuff had not been answered, and I suspect I would need professional help to answer them, but I knew at least why I will keep on climbing, at least for the forseeable future.
A fillip for my dedicated readers - Rosie and Jo I think that is you, I don't think anyone else bothers to visit anymore (please feel free to comment if this is not the case) - a picture of H today before going to his first day at school. Oh, didn't I mention that?
A very last thing - if you want to see the climb at first hand Dave, the Legend of the Mountains, has made a beautiful little film of it that you can see here.
I was walking beside T's mum when we saw a white bird take flight, I didn't recognise it but T's mum suggested it might be an Egret. A quick stop to get the bird book and the bins out of my bag and the sighting was confirmed. I was very happy as I've never seen one (knowingly) so a bit of a tick for the twitcher inside me. What I hear you say? You never told us you were a twitcher (or maybe I did but I can't be bothered to check back on previous blogs to confirm)!
It all started with the climbing of course - after spending a certain amount of time at cliffs, especially sea cliffs, one can't help but be aware of all the interesting birds that are around and from there it is just a hop, skip and jump to carrying a bird identification handbook and a pair of binoculars in your bag in case you see anything interesting. Something I haven't managed yet is deciding how to formalise my collecting instincts in this field. Apparently if you are a really serious twitcher you can get tick lists that you fill out obsessively with details of the birds you collect see. I'm not ready yet for this full blown twitching mania but the thought occurred to me that I could blog it instead. Then it would also be a way to keep fueling this blog. So there you go - I saw my first Egret the other day.
On to other things and of course it's going to be an OCR. A report of a recent trip to the Culm Coast where I yet again failed to climb Solid Air, not that I tried and failed, rather I didn't even get close (OK I saw it from a distance). There had been a serious accident on the cliff it is on recently, I suspect on that very climb though don't know as the details are shrouded in mystery, and the whole thing has developed a bit of bad juju for me. So anyway I didn't climb Solid Air but I did climb the awesome Wreckers' Slab (or just Wreckers' in climbing shorthand).
This, like Solid Air, is a climb I'd looked at ever since getting a copy of the West Country guide book for Christmas about four years ago. The description in the guide starts "One of the longest, most alluring and serious VS climbs in the West Country...". (ed. VS is Very Severe, a climbing grade before (of course) Hard Very Severe).
I'd wanted to climb it for years but left my house at 6.00 a.m. one Saturday morning still unsure in my mind. For one thing the route has a reputation, as the guide suggests, for being "serious". In climbing parlance this means that you shouldn't take the route lightly, because the consequences of any errors are likely to be serious. For this particular route this means if you get the tides wrong, or the amount of time it will take you to climb it, you'll be in for some fun. The route also has more than it's fair share of loose rock - and you don't want to a) throw any of that on anyone below you b) trust your life to any gear which relies on rock you can't trust c) pull on any hold to find that suddenly neither it, nor you, are now attached to the cliff anymore. For another I am still only climbing intermittently and confidence and flow are both affected if you are not in the habit of climbing. Lastly the partner I had lined up hadn't been replying to my emails. For a route like this the partner is crucial as you will be trusting them that much more than on some easily accessible roadside crag. The guy I had in mind was Dave B (not Dave the Legend of the Mountains) but the other Dave from this blog when we climbed the nine pitch monster of Slanting Buttress Ridge Route on Lliwedd together. Other Dave is a pretty experienced mountaineer who, despite his fondness for vulture masks and driving to a CD of the Red Army Choir ("Our Rockets are Always Ready" being a *highlight*), I would be prepared to do this route with. In the event I pulled into the campsite at 8.30 a.m to find him there and apologetic as he wasn't expecting me so early. It turns out he had been replying to my emails, just I hadn't been getting his replies for some reason.
We spent the Saturday climbing at Vicarage Cliff where I had been before - it's a nice spot with amenable single pitch slab climbs and it was good to unwind a bit and get my body and mind used to climbing and ropework whilst thinking through whether I was prepared to commit to Wreckers'. A reality check arrived early though when I was asked to set up the abseil rope off of the top (you can't walk down when you get to the top of the climbs). I wasn't asked because of any particular expertise but merely because I was in the right place to set the rope up at the time. It was sobering to suddenly find myself rigging a system that not just me but others, including several novices, would be trusting their lives to. It's not hard to rig an abseil - just tie a few knots - but you sure as hell want to make sure you do it right, especially with novices who would not spot if you had done something wrong. Anyway the day passed off very pleasantly, including an early retirement for me when I walked off to a nearby headland to see if I could spot some sea birds. Instead I found myself watching a few of the others get wet feet as they misjudged the tide and had to wade back to terra firma at the end of their last climb. Once the threat of drowning had passed I had a very good chuckle at them!
During the day I vacillated - at times committed to climbing Wreckers', at others I'd made up my mind to call it off and go for a walk instead. In the pub that night beer fuelled ambitions and everything seemed easy. Alone in my tent listening to Hartland's church bells at 4.00 a.m. I questioned what possible motive I could have for being here and doing this.
The dawn of day brought new courage and my internal compass settled on "go for it", Dave seemed oblivious to my internal dialogue and a last minute recruit to the team, French William, oozed enthusiasm despite his inexperience. Our start was inauspicious with Dave forgetting his boots (but luckily remembering this after a few minutes drive) and me missing the turn to the crag. Eventually we got there and began the walk in - a tiring 45 minute walk up the coast over a couple of steep sided valleys.
The first glimpse of the climb was intimidating in exactly the same way that seeing the Devil's Slide on Lundy was. This thing was big! I would guess the photo below is taken from about a kilometre away:
Weirdly on seeing it my confidence waxed and Dave's seemed to wane. Both of us were buoyed by William who expressed nothing but radiant enthusiasm. We walked round to the top and the fought our way down to the beach at the bottom past all manner of spikey plants and over all sorts of horrible shale.
Dave had the first lead and despatched it without too much wimpering ("Have you found the piton?" I shout "Yes, and a more godawful piece of rusted junk I've never seen" he shouted back) and before long the rope was tugging at my waist and I was off - climbing and climbing. Another thing about this climb is that all the pitches are long - about 40 metres. Consider that the height of an average storey is about 3 metres, so by the time you get to the top of a 40 metre pitch it's like standing on top of a 12 storey building or so. When I reached him at the top of the first pitch Dave was standing on a small foot ledge and I desperately tried to override my brain's attempts to lose me in total panic. If I looked at the ground my perspective did that funny thing you see in some films where the foreground zooms in and the background zooms out. Thankfully the rituals of swapping the lead rack over and sorting the ropes out distracted me and as soon as William had joined us I was away and any unease was lost in the glorious single minded focus of climbing. The pitch headed up a few metres to a band of overhangs, the hardest climbing of the route, but after one or two slightly tenuous moves I was pulling over them and up onto the slab above them.
Me (or my arse) about to go through the overhangs:
What followed was glorious. The climbing was easy and the position sensational. There was no desperate searching for holds, or climbing back down for a rest before having another go. Simply look up and find nice in-cut hold for hand, test it to make sure it is not loose, look down and find obvious foot hold and then up, up, up. I paused after about 25 metres to shout down "This is awesome!" to the guys below. It's always a good sign when you find yourself enjoying the climbing in the moment. I kept expecting it to get harder and it just didn't and suddenly I was at the belay - from afar it was hard to tell what it was like but up close it was marvellous. A nice big comfy sandy ledge to sit on and good gear placements for the belay. I made everything ready and sat back and soaked up the ambience as I belayed the others up - I was sat 80 metres up a cliff above a beautiful view, and the back of the climb was broken and what the hell I didn't need to do any more leading as Dave would lead the next pitch anyway. I had time to ponder the ants who emerged from my sandy ledge - what is their universe like with their home up here, living their busy ant lives with occasional interruptions from passing humans? Thoughts of how we must appear thus to anyone who cared to look down from on high on us.
Here's a photo taken of us by some friends who were in the vicinity. You can make us out but only if you know exactly where to look. Look at the purple line on this one first - the dots marks the belays:
Now look at the same places as the dots and you might just be able to make out the white dots of two helmets a the second belay and the dot of an orange helmet below us at the first. I may have mentioned it's a big climb!
The last pitch passed without drama and it was handshakes, snacks and greedy slurps from water bottles at the top.
William let on that this was only the fourth time he'd climbed outside. Dave and I fell about - for one thing he'd impressed both of us with his calm competence so much the day before that we'd both independently come to the conclusion we'd like to have him along. For another as Dave said "I've been psyching myself up for this route for years" and he'd just strolled up it on his fourth ever trip outdoors. True we did everything for him - all he had to do was climb and remove the gear we put in but it was some achievement none the less and it was a great pleasure to have his company on the climb. I like to think it is a very good memory of the UK that he will take home with him to France!
I'll put this photo in as well. A cream tea at the lovely Vicarage Tea Rooms by the car park. This was taken on the Saturday, sadly it was shut by the time we got there after Wreckers' on the Sunday.
I was tingling with the buzz of the climb for a week or so afterwards. The questions about why I was there when I could be at home doing family stuff had not been answered, and I suspect I would need professional help to answer them, but I knew at least why I will keep on climbing, at least for the forseeable future.
A fillip for my dedicated readers - Rosie and Jo I think that is you, I don't think anyone else bothers to visit anymore (please feel free to comment if this is not the case) - a picture of H today before going to his first day at school. Oh, didn't I mention that?
A very last thing - if you want to see the climb at first hand Dave, the Legend of the Mountains, has made a beautiful little film of it that you can see here.