Road Trip with the Lads

Road trips are a big part of climbing culture. I certainly did plenty with Fiona as I was lucky to have a climbing and life partner all in one. Lads trips fuelled by beer and bravado were also great fun. Most relatively straightforward. Drive, climb, beer, repeat. Some were mini epics even before the drive though. 

We were only about 3 years married. I had an old banger Ford Escort with no MOT or handbrake for taking firewood from the Forest above our house where I was clear felling. I had filled it with logs at the bottom of what we knew as "The Tarry Brae". Unusually it was a steep section of forest road that had tar laid on it. I filled the car up with logs, went over the top and the bugger just stopped and started slowly rolling back. I thought I had time to get the brick under a back wheel but it skewed out and I was left hanging off the open boot full of logs and slipped off the the side as the car went back stopping itself on a big butt at the side of the road. Pretty grazed up and shaken I got back in and after several try's got the car going again and gunned it over the top and back down a gentler but longer way back.  Arriving back I dumped the old car at the house and Fiona told me George Reid had been on the phone. Paul Rodgers and Paul Moores both Joint Services Mountain Training Instructors were going down to North Wales for three days did I want to come so we had two ropes of two. I ok'd it with Fiona, and they agreed to come down and collect me about 7 o'clock that night, but we needed to go down via an up to Fort George. 

Climbers Club Hut Llanberis

We arrived in Inverness about 9pm, found a bar and Paul went off to Fort George for something.  We got picked back up about 11pm and headed South at mach1 in Pauls RS Cosworth arriving late at a  railway bridge near Penrith where we could get under and sleep. I kept rolling off down into a fence where rail tracks were and every half an hour a goods train rumbled past. Not the best of sleeps. Early morning we head South with a visit to the  Great Orme Pen Trwyn and climbs left of Parisellas Cave where sport climbing had recently started. Short brutal hard climbs and a Jerry Moffat playground. Llandudno is a sort of Welsh Blackpool with not much to commend itself to climbers but plenty if your old. 

Wrecked fingers later and off to Llanberis and the Pass. It had been five years since my last visit to the pass, where darts with Mo, Joe and Whillans at the Padarn were the evening entertainment. Again we stayed at Ynys Ettws the climber Club hut where there was a meet on including some Fell & Rock folk we new such as Nick Escort. We manged to blag the last available bunks. I was on the top one of a three tier. Down to the "old Vic" for a beer with Mo and Joe which turned out to be several as folk we knew turned up like John Ellis Roberts whom I had met through mountain rescue a few years earlier. Many pints were had. I vaguely remember folk gathered around me in the middle of the night as I got up for a piss forgetting I was 15ft up and crashed onto the floor waking everyone up. I don't know how, but I didn't piss myself!  Anyway, breakfast at Pete's Eats then out to Gogarth for Quartz Icicles, Dreams of White Horses, abseils, drowning potential, sea and sunshine. "Dreams" was regarded as an exciting HVS 4c back then, which technically is about right. However, waves crash over the first pitch if you go low, and if you fall off the last pitch you better have prussiks or your not coming back up. The other option is down into the Zawn and drowning.

A good days climbing was had and we headed out to sunny Caernarfon for beer, fish and chips, and visit to a local climbers pub with rough men, pretty women and trouble brewing. I made the mistake of thinking I could just chat to a girl that came over to speak not realising green eyed monsters were watching. We escaped back to the Llanberis and the old Vic again. Next day was spent in the pass ticking of Brant Direct, Slape Direct and Ribs with Crackstones and Crackstones with Ribs, Eroded Grooves and me flying off a polished Unicorn Direct not knowing it was a sandbag. Many routes later and dehydration so George produces two cans of Macewans Export from his rucksack. We stash gear and put on our packs. He cracks a tinny and takes a good slurp puts the can down and I bend over to get it and a huge rock hits my back and knocks me over. A guy above the crag must have knocked the rock off. You kind of just shrug that shit off. I was more shaken from flying off the shiny polished second pitch of  Unicorn as my hand jams pulled.

Tremendous Book ***

Back down to the car and mach1 northwards through late Sunday night traffic, arriving back in Duror about 1am. A snuggle up to a warm cosy young wife, get up at 7am, collect the Husky chainsaw, fuel cans and stuff and up the wood to cut as many tons of trees as I could. Road trips were fun. Not sure where time has gone as back then we thought we had forever. Now only memories. 

Post Script. 

• John Ellis Roberts died in a climbing accident on Dinas Cromlech July 2014

• Paul Rodgers lost his life in the Cairngorms January 1984 

"Where the mountains touch the sky,

Where poets DREAM, where eagles fly,

A secret place above the crowd,

Just beneath a silver-lined cloud"