A Lakeland autumn: the hill opposite turning a rich golden brown, leaves falling in the little artificial lake at the bottom of the drive, and rock warm to the touch under an autumnal sun. I had three weeks before my lecture season started – three weeks to skirmish with my book, lie in the sun and climb when the will took me, or friends arrived to drag me – all too willing – away from work. Two of our most regular visitors were Mike Thompson and Martin Boysen. Mike was one of my oldest friends. We had first met at Sandhurst, back in 1956, when he joined my company. He was already a climber, having been born and brought up in Cumberland. He went to St Bees, a school more renowned for prowess at rugby than academic learning, and had wandered the hills in his spare time, either with or without permission.
He also had gone into the Royal Armoured Corps – into the cavalry – spending three years in Malaya and then returning to this country to complete a university course at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham. Mike was getting tired of army life at the same period that I was becoming discontented. His problem, however, was that having started the science course, the army insisted on getting their money’s worth from him and therefore insisted that he complete at least another five years after finishing at Shrivenham. At this stage, Mike was determined to escape, wanting to get a place at university to study anthropology. He struck on an ingenious solution to his problem by standing for Parliament, since no member of the armed forces can become involved in politics, and yet it is anyone’s constitutional right to stand for Parliament if they so desire. In 1962 he stood as Independent candidate for Middlesbrough West. Much to his surprise, he got around fifty votes, but lost his deposit. This freed him from the army.
In the autumn of 1964 he was just starting his final year at University College, London. Besides his interest in anthropology he had a flair for property – many of our Lakeland climbing trips had been spent exploring ruined barns as possible conversions. He had spent a couple of summers converting one such ruin above the Duddon Valley, and, in London, had secured the lease of an unfurnished flat high above Dean Street, living in it for three years nearly rent free, by sub-letting rooms to friends. In Mike’s make-up there is a property tycoon and an anthropologist sometimes working hand in hand – at other times in conflict. He is one of those people who never seem in a hurry, never seem to do very much, yet quietly and effectively succeed in carving out a life of their own choosing.
Martin Boysen had slotted into a more conventional mould. He was one of the most brilliant rock-climbers that this country, or to be more accurate, Germany, had produced since the war. Born in 1941, at Aachen, of a German father and an English mother, he spent a terrifying infancy, of which he could have barely been aware, with his mother under constant surveillance by the Gestapo, and constant threat of arrest. After the war they came back to England, and Martin was brought up in Tonbridge, near Harrison’s Rocks. He started going to the rocks when he was fourteen and it was here that I first met him, a shy, gangling boy who drifted up the most difficult problems with an easy grace, showing no visible effort. He went to Manchester University in 1961 to study biology, met Maggy in his first term, took her climbing and they have been together ever since. Maggy, slim, vital, dynamic, compensates for Martin’s easy indolence. We spent many delightful weekends with him when they visited us at Woodland. They both had a deep abiding love for the hills which went further than just a passion for rock-climbing. Martin had an extensive knowledge and interest in the fauna and flora of the mountains – and this was how one of the best routes I helped to put up in the Lake District came to be called the Medlar – named after a rare tree, reputed to be found only in Southern England, but growing at the foot of our climb.
Martin and Mags arrived one weekend shortly after I had got back from the Alps. Mike was over in the Duddon Valley, working on his cottage at Bigert Mire. The weather was perfect and Martin knew of the ideal new route for us to try.
‘I had a go at it a couple of weeks ago,’ he admitted, ‘but I wasn’t climbing well, and turned back.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Wait and see – we’ll have to make sure it’s fine tomorrow.’
Such is the secrecy that surrounds any possible new line – there are so few left in the Lakes.
The morning was fine and Martin revealed that our planned ascent was on Raven Crag of Thirlmere. From the road it is lost in the conifer woods that cling to the slopes of Thirlmere – the crag is a good 600 feet up the hillside, steep and slender, with jutting, angular overhangs. A light green lichen clings to the rock, making patterns similar to amoeba or bacteria seen through a microscope. The crag was discovered, in 1952, by Harold Drasdo and Pete Greenwood. Its very character, yielding bold lines on very steep rock, attracted some of the outstanding post-war climbers to its flanks. Pete Greenwood was a leading light of the Wall End Barn mob, a group of climbers who temporarily opted out of the rat race, long before beatniks or hippies had been thought of; they raced round the Lakes on high-powered motor-bikes, and went in for prodigious drinking sessions. As with many of the hard climbing groups, their members later settled down to successful careers in a number of widely differing fields. Pete Greenwood, finally deciding that he had had enough of bumming around, worked his guts out as a labourer on the Spade Adam project, saved enough money to buy a plot of land, built a house, borrowed more money, and is now a property tycoon in Cumberland. Jack Bradley, who made the first ascent of Necropolis, an attempt to tackle the huge cave that is carved out of the centre of the crag, seemed to be one of the wildest members of the Wall End mob. He became a successful financier in Leeds, floating companies with the same sang froid that you or I would display buying a few premium bonds.
Communist Covert, a fine line that works through the big overhangs of the cave, and airily across the upper part of the buttress, fell to Arthur Dolphin, a climber whose brilliant career was cut short in 1954. He was Lakeland’s leading rock-climber, making the same impact in the Lakes that Joe Brown and Don Whillans were making in Wales. Even today, some of his routes rank as the finest and most difficult in the area.
The final stamp of recognition for the crag came in 1956, when Don Whillans forced the overhangs of the cave with his route, Delphinus. It was a typical Whillans route, a direct onslaught at the most obvious, and certainly the most formidable, challenge of the cliff.
And now, on a fine September’s day, Martin Boysen, Mike and I were picking our way through the sweet-smelling woods towards the foot of the crag.
‘That’s the line,’ said Martin. ‘Up that undercut ramp to the left of the cave.’
‘It looks bloody hard,’ I replied. ‘Are you sure it’s possible?’
‘Oh yes, you’ll do it all right. I’d only just recovered from glandular fever when I tried it.’
And so I found myself at the sharp end. I was well armed with a wide selection of nuts. We were still in the primitive nut era, when you simply scrounged a collection of nuts from the local garage and threaded them on a few slings. The smallest were Meccano-style nuts on thin bits of line that would barely have held a man’s deadweight, and the biggest were over an inch across and weighed a pound a time. The purists drilled out the threads, but I hadn’t bothered.
I didn’t feel like leaving the ledge – the rock leaned back the wrong way; the holds seemed minute, tiny flakes, cracks that took a finger tip and no more; and after forty feet or so, a nasty little overhang jutted out at least a foot.
‘I’m bloody sure I won’t get up this. There’s nothing for protection.’
‘Course there is,’ replied Martin. ‘I got a good spike runner about six feet up – look, you can see it.’
With a careful look I could – and it was minuscule, but at least it provided some kind of haven to head for. I balanced up gingerly, weight on fingertips slotted into horizontal cracks; a couple of moves and I’m at the spike; it’s just big enough to balance a thin line sling round. Another move and I manage to slot a small nut into one of the cracks. I begin to feel better. Even if I fall off, I shouldn’t hurt myself.
My arms are beginning to ache, but the long disappointing season in the Alps is beginning to pay off. I am at least fit and mentally attuned to the rock. I am even beginning to enjoy myself; I stop threatening to turn back; edge my way from hold to hold, relaxed, wary, looking for possible runners. Forty feet up, and the base of the overhang, a perfect thread belay, just big enough for a piece of line. I untie the knot of a sling, using one hand and my teeth, push the end of the line into the crack and get out my wire threader to thrust and manipulate the nylon string behind a bulge in the crack – I’m like a safe-breaker, playing the tumblers of the safe in the Bank of England – total concentration – a touch of exhilaration. And the sling is through. More one-handed contortions to tie the knot – my other hand is getting tired. I’m safe again and happy – a master of the steep rock around me, master of my mind and muscles. I jam a hand in the crack beneath the overhang, place a foot in just the right place to give me leverage, and swing up, reach up; fingers play over the ledge above the roof, slot naturally on to a dimple in the rock – it’ll suffice – and I step up on to the ledge with ease, muscle and mind tensed, knowing it’s hard, yet everything slipping into place. This is the joy of climbing, the absolute freedom of mind and body, a short-bloomed euphoria that flowers in the process of climbing, and can be savoured while resting on the stances before another pitch, lasting through to the top of the climb and down to the pub that evening – the logical end to every Lakeland climbing day. And then next day, with the confrontation of work, of day-to-day problems, the euphoria fast vanishes and the climb is just one more incident docked up in the past. But still it has an importance, as a moment of total relaxation, of unspoilt joy, the repetition of the experience, a goal to seek for other days, till one day, when muscles will no longer respond to the command of mind, this precious euphoria might prove unattainable. I wonder what then?
But I’m at the top of the overhang; a black groove beckons me on, and Martin shouts out from below:
‘How about belaying there, Chris?’
He’s worried I’ll get the whole climb. Fair enough, after all the line was his concept, not mine. And so I hammer in a piton, slot in a couple of nuts and, half hanging off my belay, take the rope in. As Martin climbs up, I gaze down over the dark tops of pine trees, across Thirlmere, a twisted sword stabbing at the vitals of a Lakeland Valley. Not so many years ago there were no sombre pine trees; farmhouses nestled in the bed of the valley and a Lakeland road, narrow, between dry stone walls, wound across the valley bed. This has now been changed by the hands of man – the valley bottom was flooded, forests were planted on the slopes, and a new beauty has emerged, more sombre, brooding, but nevertheless with its own attraction. I can feel the heat of the sun on my face; feel the warm rock against my back; rub a little patch of dried moss into a powder and watch the specks of dust float down towards Martin, as he moves slowly, but oh so easily, up towards me.
And then it’s his turn to go out in front. He tries the groove behind me but makes no progress, swings out on to the wall. It’s steep and flaky, with tiny spikes for finger- and toe-holds. Another few feet, he pauses, goes back a bit; most unlike Martin, but he’s still recovering from glandular fever. I’m bored, the rope begins to cut into my back and I think of pints of cool beer, the reward for victory.
Martin seems to be struggling; a tension is transmitted down the rope. He’s standing in a sling balanced over a small flake; the flake breaks off, Martin slips, seizes a hold and somehow manages to remain hanging on to the rock; another struggle and he’s up. I quickly bring up Mike Thompson to join me, and then, in turn, we climb to the top of the crag.
Pints of beer, jubilation at snatching a fine new route and talk of other possible lines. Mike is the great strategist. We’ve been climbing together for nearly twenty years, and on hard ground I have done most of the leading, but almost all the new routes we have done together have been Mike’s discoveries. In the same way that he quietly seeks out interesting old houses, he searches for new lines on the crags. That day he had seen another possible route, straight up the centre of the crag. We returned, just the two of us, a couple of days later, to complete a route which was slightly easier than the Medlar, but longer and with a more satisfying line, straight up the centre of the crag to the barrier of overhangs that guard the top.
And so September slipped into October, a gently vanishing Indian summer that blended imperceptibly with the chill clouds of late autumn, and the start of a new lecture season – our sole source of income, £20 a time at luncheon clubs, lecture societies or mountaineering clubs. I hated the nomadic existence – the series of one-night stands, the driving, the filling in of time before another lecture, and, above all, the worry that I was getting nowhere. The carefree joy of a summer’s climbs vanished in the reality of making a day-to-day living.