Re-writing Yorkshire Climbing History

A couple of quick highlights from my recent Yorkshire road trip. In each case I found the guidebook descriptions to be completely wrong, and have made the relevant adjustments below. You're welcome.

Great Western HVS 5a - Almscliff

One of the all-time classic routes of the country. The guidebook will tell you to climb the obvious corner crack, hand traverse the horizontal break into a niche, then finish up the exposed right hand crack to the top. This is wrong. What you must actually do is this;

Climb the corner crack, as per the guide, then at it's top place a nut. Fail to adequately extend this runner because rope drag is fun. Then, commit to the hand traverse and get pumped fiddling around with a cam placement. Continue scuttling sideways to where an obvious line of huge jugs lead up into the beckoning niche. Ignore this unsporting cop out. Instead you must continue traversing leftwards, on ever-worsening holds and foot smears, into the horrendously overhanging jamming crack of Western Front (E3).

Gaze rightward in horror at the now distant cam that is your last piece of protection. Note the ground crunching pendulum fall you will take when your knackered arms eventually give up and let go. Shriek hysterically at your belayer. This is his fault. It's the guidebooks fault. It's everyone's fault but yours. With the very last bit of strength you have, wedge in a cam, any cam, and slump onto it. By now your bitter tears should be cascading nicely down the rock to the ground below. Lower off, sulk, then climb the route correctly. Belly flop onto the summit a broken shell of a man. Congratulations, you've just ticked a classic!

The Diedre E2 5b - Kilnsey

A compelling and traditional route, tackling the striking corner line. The easiest climb on the crag. The guidebook will tell you it is soft for the grade. In the same way that water is technically 'soft', right up to the moment you fall hundreds of feet onto it, and explode into lots of little red pieces.

Pitch 1, 5a. Climb the corner via a series of hollow blocks that have no visible attachment to the cliff itself. Protection is placed behind these blocks. Falling off will inevitably cause the whole lot to come tumbling down with you underneath. Every hold that looks good from below will be terrible, and every hold that looks terrible in fact does not exist. When the corner steepens, make irreversible moves onto the vegetated right hand wall. Spend a long time getting desperately pumped gardening for holds you will never find. The various flowers and tufts of grass will poke you repeatedly in the face until your every orifice is dribbling mucus. Blinded by hayfeaver make the final grovelling moves to what the guidebook hilariously refers to as 'a ledge'.

Discover that the ledge in question is an inch wide foot rail on an otherwise vertical rock face. Here you must build a hanging belay. Spend a good hour poking wires into flared seams and cracks behind loose blocks, resisting the growing urge to get your belayer to phone for a helicopter. When you eventually find something vaguely solid you will have no choice but to trust your full weight upon it. Should this fail, see the previous comment regarding an avalanche of plummeting rock with in-situ climber.

You are now dangling helplessly from an equalised cluster of directional pieces. Bring up your second into this unfolding nightmare. 

Pitch 2, 5b. The hard bit. You will not be able to see the leader once he has cleared the initial bulge. Blindly feed out rope and hope he doesn't fall off. Once he reaches the top it is your turn. Dismantle the belay and climb up to a steep corner. Ignore the obvious stack of juggy blocks because they all move, and will all detach from the cliff and hit you in the face should you so much as breathe upon them. Instead burrow upwards on the absence of holds into a hanging tree. Get scratched to ribbons as you prune your way higher. Here a steep crack leads around an overhang, the first of many cruxes. Commit to a desperate layback sequence, get stuck, pull every muscle in your left arm, then fall off. Dangle in space kicking the rock and saying the word 'cunt' over and over again.

Eventually pull through to a good hold, and contemplate a desperate rising traverse left to reach a tree. Execute the hardest boulder problem known to man to reach said tree, and discover the final and most evil test of them all. You must now traverse back right to regain the corner. However there is no protection against a pendulum fall, thus cocking it up will result in you catapulting into the right hand wall of the corner and probably breaking all your ribs. Burrow deeper into the foliage of your haven. Consider starting a new life as a tree dwelling creature, living off rainwater and bark.

Here your climbing partner must either mollycoddle or shame you into committing to the traverse. A series of nerve-shattering moves on holds that will never be good enough may lead you at last to the sanctuary of the corner. Finish easily to finally reach the top, beset with agony and mental trauma. Give up climbing and/or kill yourself. 

Every single fucking route on the crag - Malham Cove

Polished to buggery, upside-down holds, and it's all way too fucking difficult anyway. Go to the pub instead you useless fat shit.

The Roaches

I'm going to fucking smash it this trip. Yeah I was climbing like a sack of shite in Wales last weekend, but that was then, and when has anything good ever happened in Wales anyway? Nah this is going to be awesome, it's gritstone. I'm great on gritstone. I only fell off Flying Buttress Direct once.

International Climbing Superstars

Crawling down the M6 in heavy rain and traffic, god I wish all these pricks would just fuck off and let us get to the crag already. Pat's driving, I'm knocking back the beers. Finally we arrive at the Roaches. After bunging all the gear in the hut and meeting all the others we hike round the crag to check out some routes by headtorch. Elegy. Commander Energy. E2s. I was a million miles away from E2 in Wales, but like I said, who gives a shit about that? Raining all the fucking time. It never rains in the Peak District does it? I'm a bit pissed now. I tell everyone that I'll be leading all these nails hard routes tomorrow, I'm sure they're well impressed, and rightly so. 

Back to the hut, more beers, fucking hell I can't wait...

Pat leading Black and Tans

Bright and early next morning, I'm not hungover, result! Quick brew, pack the kit and off we go to the Upper Tier, because Lower still looks like a giant sneezed all over it. But Christ all these hard routes look really steep now. It must be a trick of the light, I'm still going to fucking own them all. But maybe I should just warm up on a few easy ones first. Because, you know. We fly up a couple of Severes and I feel alright, so I raise the game, step it up to Hard Severe. It actually feels a bit tricky but I get there in the end. Nothing's gonna stop me today.

Now it's Pats turn. He wants to lead the Sloth, that massive roof crack that I did last year. With my totally non-selective memory I tell him it was completely piss, I basically could've soloed the bloody thing if I was that bothered about it.

Sorting the gear before committing to flakey overhanging madness

So he climbs up to the roof and chucks a sling around that big block, down to the resting ledge, up down up down, I'm falling asleep down here on the deck. I could've done it 10 times by now. Finally Pat mans up and commits to the roof, cranks round to the lip, places a hex. He tries to get a hand jam, fails, and then falls off. 

Pat searches in vain for the 'massive fucking jug' I sort of remember being there

There's the bastard

But he nuts up, eventually sinks the jam and pulls through, and at last it's my turn to climb. I might do it no feet just for a laugh, seeing as I'm seconding and all that. But when I get under the roof it's actually really fucking scary, I'm shitting myself. So I keep my feet well on, swinging desperately from hold to hold. Jolly up to the lip, quick hand jam, reach up and bang, it's in the bag. That's what I told Pat but I CAN'T GET THE FUCKING HAND JAM RIGHT. I'm hanging upside down, strength leaking away, weakly slapping at the rock and slobbering everywhere. I sort of manage it in the end but still, fuck me, that was horrible. 

It's my turn to lead an HVS now so I do Saul's Crack. I find this one fucking hard work as well. It's obvious that I need a full days climbing before I can lead some E2s, so tomorrow I will get straight on them and show everyone how it's done. Tomorrow.

Some lump of rock called Valkyrie, apparently

It's early evening now and Pat wants to do Valkyrie. I've already done this one as well but seeing as I'm just training for tomorrow I think why the fuck not, be generous, and so off we go. I decide to lead pitch 1 because don't tell anyone but I led the second pitch last time and it was actually really hard, a proper brown trouser job, so...

The horrible awkward crack of pitch 1

Hand traverse higher up. I climb in this pose all the time, and you never see me move, you just blink and I'm somewhere else...

I struggle up the smeggy initial crack. It's because this route is too easy for me to properly engage with, it's not worth applying my talent to. Hand traverse some flakes into a trench belay by a massive tooth of rock, up comes Pat. He doesn't look too happy with what is still to come.

Guess who's about to lead the scary pitch

Well that's his problem isn't it. This route is kind of unique I suppose, in that the hardest bit is downclimbing, not up. Pat grovels up to the top of the tooth and starts going back down the other side. I don't think he's enjoying himself very much. I know this because he's shrieking hysterically every step of the way. I pay out the ropes and just enjoy the view.

Looking out from the ledge, flailing leader just out of shot

Pat reaches the bottom of the tooth and says he can't find the hidden foothold that makes it piss. What the hell. I found it easily when I did it. Still, he manages to do the tricky rockover move onto the front face of the buttress, and then finishes up the easy slab to the summit. Now it's my turn. I strip the belay and gain the top of the tooth, then start the downclimbing. God it's actually really fucking hard. I wedge the left side of my body into the crack, right side hanging uselessly. My feet scrabble in vain for purchase. There's claret everywhere. I'm in agony. This isn't VS, it's E5, it's all gone tits up...I cannot, for the fucking life of me, find the hidden foothold.

I bet it's fallen off. That must be what's happened. My foot thrashes around in space, finding nothing. I scream to Pat for a tight rope. A crowd of people watch in amusement, I wish they would all drop dead. I eventually find the hidden bloody foothold and burst into tears.

Found the fucking stupid fucker

The well protected final slab

I mince up the rest of the pitch leaving a nice trail of blood all over the route. At the summit Pat and I just sit there shivering and muttering, comparing battle scars. I tell him we must've gone the wrong way and done an E5 instead. We fuck off to the pub and more beer. I reckon I'll be fine for some really hard stuff tomorrow though, it's not like you have to downclimb hidden footholds on every fucking route here, right? I'll be a new man in the morning. Now whose round is it?

Pat leading in the freezing wind

Tomorrow comes. I'm not feeling so good now. But I have to try something hard anyway, it's what I'm here for. The forecast is wank so we get started early, knocking out a couple of easy routes, ominous clouds rolling in across the moors. The wind blows, it's freezing cold now. I read through the guidebook, hands numb, Elegy or Commander Energy. Fucking hell, I've got to do at least one of them, I've got to try-

It starts pissing it down. 

Thank fuck for that.

Main Wall

I wake up in a car in the Cromlech layby, the wind howling and the sky filled with ominous black clouds. But it's not raining. Fuck me it's actually not raining, this is as good as it gets in the bloody Pass. Staples and I lurch into action, knackered from bugger all sleep, stuffing gear into packs and stumbling towards a crag called Cyrn Las. It's high and north facing, it never sees the sun. My logic is that if it's horrible everywhere in the Pass we may as well be on a crag that's horrible all the time. Plus there's a super classic route called Main Wall somewhere up there...

Main Wall goes up the really wet bit in the middle, of course

God I'm unfit. The walk up kills me. We gear up and scramble to the base of a somewhat damp slab that apparently we're supposed to climb. Staples takes the lead...

David 'everything that kills me makes me feel alive' Staples about to sack off pitch 1

He fumbles around at the wet holds, walks back and forth along the ledge for a while, then eventually gives up. I'm taking the piss the whole time. What a fucking pussy. So I grab the rack and have a go, christ it's hard, and immediately I begin a shameful grovel off to the right up a sort of waterfall. Staples justifiably tells me what a hypocritical prick I am. Easy but hilariously wet climbing sees me reach a belay on a spike. Staples then leads a short traverse to a hanging belay on another spike, and we hope that now that's all over we can actually start climbing this bloody thing...

Staples looking psyched for what's to come

Just follow the vertical stream

The next pitch is wetter than a mermaids twat. I make a hard traverse along an ice rink foot-rail to a decent sling runner, then into a disgusting corner chimney crack bastard thing. A vast and delicate ecosystem of slime greets me. I sling a block, squirm my way higher, skidding all over the place. There are no holds. Well there's loads, but they've all got enough water to flood the Sahara running down them. I aid off a nut, slippery hand jams, power screaming as I mince onto yet another godforsaken underwater ledge...

Main Wall holding a gun to my head and saying SMILE BITCH

Staples has a great time seconding the pitch. We hang off the belay and gaze about the grey expanse of the Pass with thousand yard stares. It's fucking cold up here. Very very occasionally the sun pokes out from the mass of death clouds, just to remind us how cold it is without it...

Another wet pitch

At least it's getting a bit drier now. The next pitch is easy enough, it leads to a massive ledge. However there are no decent anchors, so it takes Staples a while to fiddle in and equalise a load of shite, and I'm slowly getting hypothermic at the belay, waving my arms around like a complete spanner. I finally shiver my way up to Staples and tell him I'm giving up climbing...

Setting out on the second 4b pitch

At this point every hold either moved, or moved

After this pointless hissy fit I rack up and strike out towards a pinnacle. For no apparent reason the rock suddenly decides to massively deteriorate in quality, and it now feels like I'm playing Jenga for infinite stakes. I gibber into a notch in the rock and onto a steep arête. My god the holds are massive, and sort of attached to something. I'm actually enjoying myself again, I run it out for fun up to the next belay and bring up Staples for the main event...

The penultimate pitch is fucking amazing, you climb across this hanging slab to a knife edge arête, and the exposure is insane, everything dropping away to the valley far below...

The money pitch of Main Wall

Gaining the super exposed arête

Just about making up for the soaking horror of...pretty much the rest of the route

Staples leads the pitch, loving every move, and I follow slowly, wanting to enjoy the position as much as possible. It transforms the route from a grotty piece of shit to a grotty piece of shit with one good bit near the top. Stick that in the next guidebook.

Can we go to the fucking pub now?

Getting buggered by Billy Pigg

This is a post I never got round to finishing a couple years back. I recently found it again, and thought I might as well do something with it. It pretty much explains why I mainly sport climb now! No pictures I'm afraid, I was far too busy trying not to die...

Billy Pigg - E1 5b, 4c ** 'A great introduction into the art of roof thuggery'

Oh god, why?

This question is frequently running through my mind before, during, and after my 'ascent' of this Swanage roof testpiece. Being a weak, skinny, slab crawling, mountain lurking coward, the purpose of climbing a 2 meter horizontal roof on a crumbling sea cliff is utterly obscure to me. I simply cannot fathom a reason why anyone would chose to do it, unless they are being held at gunpoint. And even then I'd probably just take the bullet.

But I am climbing with Luke, and Luke, unlike me, is a good climber. Luke deliberately seeks out climbs like Billy Pigg to test his indoor wall-honed strength and technique. I am merely the poor sod who happens to be around to second him. So we abseil into the ominous vertical cheese of Boulder Ruckle and scramble along the bits that have already fallen off to the bottom of the route.

The roof looks horrifying. Like 'The Sloth' only much steeper and with no visible holds. I fight an urge to walk into the sea. Luke flakes out the ropes, grinning in anticipation of the struggle to come. He then says something like "Well, I'll just jolly up in one pitch and belay on the stakes at the top, eh!", to which I violently protest, terrified at the thought of having to tackle that roof with my belayer far, far out of ear shot. He'll never get the ropes tight enough. Never.

So Luke grudgingly consents to cramp his style for the sake of this quivering mess of a second, and off he goes. The initial wall is steady, VSish, with plenty of gear behind the usual wobbly Swanage blocks. Soon enough he is under the roof, clipping the complicated matrix of fixed gear no doubt abandoned by panicking seconds such as myself. He then places a bit more, has a fumble at the holds in the roof, and announces they are "fucking shit."

How, I wonder, can something so horizontal have fucking shit holds and still be 5b? 

Luke, an E3 leader lest we forget, searches a bit more but apparently finds nothing better, and so just cuts loose onto what is there and dangles for some time in a state of perplexion. Any second I expect him to execute a stylish, ninja-like heel hook sequence and race up to the belay ledge above. But he doesn't. Instead he slumps downwards, grabbing at the fixed gear, pendulums back under the roof again, while I grip the ropes white-knuckled and have a quiet but profound panic attack.

Apparently it is nails, then. Who fucking knew?

Luke's one attempt is enough to convince him of the futility of trying to free climb (I have long since accepted this), so instead he welds in a few more wires, attaches some slings as stirrups, and aids his way through the crux and onto the ledge above. I immediately start worrying about how I am going to get said wires out again while simultaneously using them as vital points of aid and dangling upside down. All too soon he has built a belay - of the '15 pieces but they're all crap' variety - and then it is my turn to get shafted by the route.

I climb a series of wobbling holds to the roof and focus on getting the quickdraws off the fixed gear, making a very deliberate effort to ignore what is looming right above my head. I arrange some gear on my harness. I chalk up. I rearrange the gear on my harness. I chalk up some more. I make double bloody sure I have my prussiks to hand. Every now again my helmet brushes against the roof, and I give an involuntary whimper...

But I know, deep down, that I cannot postpone the innevitable, and so I look out in horror, see the gently swaying aid sling hanging from the lip absolutely fucking miles away. I fumble at the holds. They are indeed shit. Grovelling on slippery jams yields nothing. The rope tugs impatiently at my waist. What the hell am I supposed to do?

In the end I surrender all hope, just launch myself at the sling with clawed hands, miss it completely, swing out into space, plummeting downwards, all my weight about to be abruptly transferred onto the rubbish belay above...

The feeling of rushing through the air; all those wasted moments of my life, dreams I will never achieve, the hopelessness of it all-

My harness pulls tight. Pain. I open my eyes.

Amazingly I am still alive. I can't quite decide whether or not this is a good thing. Dangling in space I grab the sling and commence to climb it hand over hand, shrieking 'TAKE!' over and over again. Slowly I winch myself up level with the aid nut and somehow manage to gain a position of vague balance, stabbing at the blasted thing with a nut key until it comes out. At the belay I take what is left of the rack and gibber my way up the chossy VS second pitch to the top, weeping softly all the while. Finally I negotiate the typical 'cutting steps with a nut key' Ruckle top out, and reach the rusty belay stake, a broken, sobbing mess of a man...

I have since read other accounts of this climb, and it seems that roughly half the people who do it are able to find a huge jug in the roof. The other half, like us of course, either improvise a desperate sequence on terrible holds and jams, or just dog the shit out of it. So where is the mythical jug then, this holy grail of holds? I've decided it must be like that bit at the end of Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade, where Harrison Ford walks over the invisible bridge - you just have to believe it's there. We faithless scum did not, and were punished accordingly. My brain tricks me into remembering a ghostly, emaciated voice whispering in my ear as I hung screaming and pleading beneath that awful bloody roof;

"You have chosen...poorly..."

Mitre Peak

I only went to Milford Sound so I wouldn't feel guilty about not going there. The plan was to stay a night, do a cruise down the fiord, then bugger off again. However, the moment I saw the spectacular Mitre Peak I began to wonder about climbing it. I asked around a few places and found out it was rarely done (only 20 ascents per year according to one local) but reasonably straightforward - mostly bushwhacking with a scramble along a jagged, exposed crest to finish. The only thing I needed to organise was a boat to take me to the start because you can't get there on foot. All this really appealed to me, a perfect mini adventure, and I got planning straight away. It wasn't so much the climbing I was interested in, as there was very little, rather the variety of terrain that stood between me and the top.

Mitre Peak

The route to the summit climbs the obvious ridgeline all the way

Mitre Peak is on all the postcards of Milford Sound. My shite pictures here do it no justice at all. It is a classically beautiful mountain, rising steeply from the fiord, lower flanks covered with trees and bush, then twisting into a tapered rocky ridge to the summit. To me it looked otherworldly, so different to the peaks of Britain and Europe that I'm used to.

The boat ride in

Blissfully unaware of the horror that awaits...

It's a long swim back if things go tits up...

Early in the morning a guy called Rosco took me across the Sound, dropped me off at the base of the peak, disappeared again. I was alone on the mountain, cut off from everyone by the dark waters of the fiord - awesome! A vague trail vanished into heavy bush and off I went. It was bushwhacking all the way, fighting through trees, hauling myself up the steep slopes on roots and vines. A machete would have honestly been quite useful. 

The incredibly promising start of the trail

Typical terrain on the Mitre Peak 'path'

David Gainor is not in the jungle, David Gainor is the jungle

Eventually I crested the first peak of the ridge and saw what awaited me. It seemed rather promising, less steep than before and through scrubby sub-alpine terrain rather than dense jungle. I was wrong, of course.

Misleading view towards the summit ridge

Looking back down the ridge towards the first peak

The easy going terrain almost immediately turned back into the bush I knew and hated. The extremely vague trail wound all over the place, crossing fallen tree trunks, around random crags, losing and gaining height without any apparent logic. After a while I realised I had been descending for ages, and when it eventually plateaued out I saw to my dismay that I'd just traversed over another sub peak of the ridge, and would have to gain all that height back again. Stupid fucking mountain...

Some awesome peaks to the east, with the annoying sub-peak of wasted energy on the left

Still, as I continued hacking my way through the jungle, the trees began to thin out, and I could see more and more of my surroundings. There were mountains everywhere, summits piercing the clouds, massive rock faces dropping down into the fiords way below...

Sweet looking ridge the valley over

Milford Sound and more peaks to the west

After another hour or so I crested yet another wooded peak, and emerged onto a flat, grassy plateau. Here I rested awhile, admiring the views, then dumped most of my gear so I could make a quick dash to the summit.

The final sub-peak before the summit ridge

The beginning of the summit ridge

Without the weight of all my bivy gear I made faster progress, hauling my way up the steep ridge by grabbing handfuls of grass and tree roots - somewhat unnerving with massive drops on either side. Soon I was on the rock and scrambling my way along the crest no worries. Kind of like the Remarkables I was hoping for some tougher climbing but it never came. Still, there would be plenty of challenges to come...

Steepening of the ridge

Looking back to the start of the ridge, a lot further than I realised on the way up

Trickier section of the ridge

Don't think this can be called a deep water solo...

As I gained height it got cloudier, and the peaks and valleys beyond were obscured from me one by one. I pretty much stuck to the crest, trying to find the steeper, cleaner bits of rock in the hope of doing a bit more proper climbing that way. The rock reminded me of the stuff in the Welsh mountains, loads of thin flakes that gave good if slightly dubious handholds. 

The ridge disappearing beneath me

Peaks vanishing into the mist

I was getting a bit tired now, and although the ridge was flattening, there was an irrititating series of false summits that I had to keep climbing up and back down the other side again. At last there was a steeper slab which was pretty fun to climb, then a short scramble up a gully to the summit. It had taken me exactly 5 hours to get there.

The final step, climbed by some good old fashioned boot jamming

The fleeting view I got from the top

Summit of Mitre Peak

I slept for a while on a flat boulder then started back down again. The ridge was tougher in reverse, I often found myself trying to downclimb piles of choss with my feet skidding all over the place. There was a steeper slab that had an abseil anchor at the top, but of course I had no rope, so down the near-vertical scree I went instead.

Scrabbling my way down choss, Milford Sound just poking out of the mist below

Unfortunately the summit never cleared of cloud, but the views got better the more I descended

Some of the highest peaks of the Darren Mountains coming into view

Soon enough I reached my gear dump and began to settle down for the night. However I still had a couple hours daylight remaining, so I decided instead to carry on a bit further, reasoning I would have less work to do the next day. This turned out to be a very good call. I was pretty knackered by this point, but managed to drag myself over the annoying sub peak, and all the way back to the top of the first bump of the ridge. I reckoned on only having an hour or so to do the following morning before reaching the pick up point. Exhausted, I ate some food and wriggled into my sleeping bag.

I slept maybe an hour or so before it started raining. Just a light drizzle to begin with, and I hoped it would soon blow over. After all the forecast was an improving one, with the next day supposed to be even better. But it didn't stop. It carried on, getting heavier and heavier, until it was absolutely pissing it down. Sometime around midnight my waterproof bivy bag gave up the ghost, and I could feel my sleeping bag getting soaked, becoming freezing cold. There was nothing I could do but suffer it out until it got light again.

And suffer I did...

The bivy where I spent the longest night of my life

By the time morning finally came I was utterly drenched and miserable, shivering away, teeth chattering. I'd spent the last few hours in a kneeling position because it seemed marginally less cold than lying down, and sleep was out of the question anyway. The bivy bag was drawn tight into a small breathing hole around my mouth, and water streamed in, down my face, into my sleeping bag. It was a relief to struggle out of the bloody thing and get going again.

I stumbled back down the trail, trying hard to not get lost in the bush. Rain lashed down from the canopy above, I skidded onto my arse every few steps, tumbling down tree roots and crashing through piles of rotting logs on the forest floor. At one point though, as I blundered along the track, a kiwi appeared from the bush right next to me. It sort of waddled around a bit, looking very confused, then disappeared back again. As even most New Zealanders never see one in the wild I felt very lucky - it almost made the long, hellish hours of the night worthwhile...

My luck must've changed by that point, because although I completely lost the trail, I managed to force a way down anyway, and soon reached a river, where it was a simple task of following it back to the Sound and the pick-up point. I radioed one of Rosco's blokes and 5 minutes later his boat materialised out of the lashing rain, and I gratefully climbed aboard. 

What an adventurous couple of days it had been. As we powered back down the Sound, rain and wind lashing the water until it foamed and spat, I did not look back.

Never a-fucking-gain.