Land's End Jolly

I wake up in the car to the sound of rain hammering down on the roof. Wind howls across the coastline. I'm absolutely shagged after the long drive up last night. Whisky. Where's the bloody whisky? All I want to do is go back to sleep again, but high tide is right in the middle of the day, and I guess we should at least try and climb something. Cam and I struggle out of our sleeping bags, grab our stuff and stagger off towards Bosigran Cliff. It's cold in the wind but at least the sun is trying to come out. We decide to warm up by soloing Bosi ridge. The tide is already racing in, and we only just manage to squeeze around the tip of the ridge as the waves crash higher and higher against the rock.

Heading towards the steep crack of pitch one

Really don't want to fall off right now

It feels committing leaving the starting ledges and climbing up towards the steep crack above, the sea crashing at my heels, but the holds are massive and we soon gain the crest of the ridge. Easy but exposed pinnacles lead us back to land. The whole thing takes about 15 minutes. Good start to the trip.

Traversing higher up, the Main Cliff behind 

We amble round to the Main Cliff and climb the mega classic Doorpost. I've done it before, so I lead the shit wet pitch at the start so Cam can have the glory jug hauling to the top. He races up the golden wall, past parallel cracks, black stained holds that seem designed to be climbed on. After that we solo Alison Rib and call it good for Bosi.

Following Cam up Doorpost

We head up the coast towards Gurnards Head and have a quick pint in the pub before hiking towards the crag. It's non tidal as long as the seas aren't too rough. Our planned route is called Right Angle, which takes this insane line into a mega intimidating zawn of black, wave battered vertical walls. It starts off easy enough with a mellow traverse to a big ledge, but you can see what you're getting into looming just ahead. The second pitch is ridiculous - you keep traversing until against all instinct you have to start climbing down, closer and closer towards the sea, all the way to a small ledge just above the high water line. Cam leads. I pay out rope and watch him disappear into the zawn.

The end of pitch one, before it all kicks off

Some rusty bit of shite from years ago (and a piece of climbing gear)

As Cam teeters across the crux to the belay ledge I feel a change in the weather. The sky darkens, the wind rises. Spots of rain. Oh fucking fuck please don't rain now. I think I've made a terrible mistake. Maybe I can just quietly untie the ropes and solo back across the first pitch, quickly, before it gets too wet. Cam can wait for a passing fisherman to notice him hanging there on the wall and rescue him, while I get pissed in the pub. Or he can just drown. Whatever. But before I can begin this dastardly betrayal the rain fizzles out and the ropes come tight and now it's my turn.

Yeah this looks ok, don't know what all the moaning was about...

OH FUCK ME I'M GOING TO DIE I'M GOING TO DIE

Nah piece of piss really

The down climb is really fun and easy until it isn't. Suddenly all the useful holds and foot ledges disappear, replaced by a slippery crack and chuff all else. My feet skid on nothing. There's nothing protecting me between here and the ledge, so if I bollocks it up I'm in the drink. I tell Cam I can't do it. This is fucking stupid, who does this out of their own free will? Awkward, off balance moves, fumbling at shite holds, my hysterical sobbing echoing around the ominous zawn. Finally a better foot ledge at the base of the crack, thank fucking god, I'm lurching across to the waiting belay. Breathe in, breathe out. Alright then, what next? Fortunately the last pitch is utterly spectacular, a 40m bridging corner that's just brilliant 3D climbing all the way. I top out into blazing sunshine once again. A perfect mini adventure. Now let's get back to the pub, there's beer to drink.

The fantastic final pitch up the big corner

Looking back into the zawn from the top

Now the temptation is to settle down for the evening and get drunk, but the weather is so good we can't resist another climb. Off to Land's End to solo the good old Long Climb. I remember this being really hard a couple years ago but we shoot up in about ten minutes flat. Finally we head towards Porthwgarra, arse end of nowhere, and pass out knackered.

Chair Ladder looms above in the early morning

Big day. Chair Ladder. Ever since doing South Face Direct in 2014 I've wanted to come back. Massive towers and buttresses of golden granite, 70m high, awkward tides and access, loads of psychotic nesting seagulls. A perfect adventure crag for shit trad climbers. We get up early to catch low tide. After gearing up we scramble down a series of boulders, jumping over chasms, heading for the western buttress. Our target is a classic HS called Pegasus. Cam starts up pitch one. It follows a wide corner crack, still wet from the receding tide. He wants to get stood up on a good hold before placing gear but his feet skid off the slimy wall, and the silly twat falls off, plummeting back down to the deck, bouncing off a ledge to land hilariously, with a massive splash, in a deep rock pool at the base of the route...

He goes in all the way to the tits! I'm absolutely pissing myself.

Me leading pitch one after Cam's little plunge

He's completely soaked and a bit bashed up, so I lead instead, and find the pitch nails. I forgot just how shit I am on Cornish granite. A bastard hard move halfway up almost shuts me down entirely, I do some desperate grovel up finger pockets while my feet flail hopelessly in the air, shrieking "THIS ISN'T HS IT'S FUCKING E3" again and again. It eases off a bit above the crack, before I reach a final roof, which thank fuck has massive holds, and then the belay. Cam seconds up, a shivering mess, and I lead off up an easier corner system, following a cool line across a curving slab. The last pitch is fairly toss, just a way to the top really, then we're both lying shell shocked on the grass and wondering if we should just go home instead.

Pitch 2 up the slanting corner system

Victorious on top

Cam changes clothes and warms up a bit, and we reckon there's just enough time to sneak in for another one before the tide gets too high. So back in we go, down climbing an awkward gully, only to find the tide is already cutting off the base of the cliff. We manage to get onto a massive boulder, from which an all or nothing leap gains a wave-washed ledge. We time our jump between waves, scrabbling up to safe ground below our chosen route - Pendulum Chimney. The sea cuts off retreat. No way out but up now.

Starting pitch two of Pendulum Chimney

Brilliant climbing further up the crack

Cam leads up a wide crack, way too wide for any gear, then splits off left up a bold face, finally managing to place a runner before heaving onto the belay ledge. More awesome pitches up cracks and corners, past the crux chimney which is bloody hard work for me (although harder for Cam to second with a rucksack), brings us to an amazing belay on a natural throne in the rock, just below the top of the cliff. I gaze out across a flawless blue sky, the ocean rippling far below me. We sit here for a while before a final pitch leads us to an exposed pinnacle summit.

Seconding Cam up pitch three

The crux chimney

Looking out from the top

We've just got time for a quick solo up the top half of Terriers Tooth, a steep fang of rock that stands proud and isolated from the main cliff, before we have to start the long drive home. The evening is warm and calm, the sun shining as we leave. It feels wrong to go, we should be drinking ale in a beer garden and planning tomorrow's adventure. Fuck work. We'll be back.

Pissing in the Wind

Easter weekend, bank holidays, Staples and I have both got five days off - brilliant! This can't be anything other than completely awesome. We'll go to a crag like Chair Ladder or Gogarth. Climb some mega classic routes. Become immeasurably better human beings in every single way....

Except we fucking won't will we. Because here comes a massive wet turd from the weather gods themselves.

Fucking Storm Katie. Fuck off, you meteological slag, go piss on somewhere else. I spend hours trawling the met office and eventually decide that Torquay gives us the best chance of dry rock on Thursday. Is there actually any climbing in Torquay? Fortunately yes, a cool looking sea cliff called Daddyhole. Alrighty then. On the drive up we come across a shop telling bottles of Talisker for £24 a pop, and seriously consider sacking the whole climbing bollocks, buying a dozen or so, and getting stone drunk for five days instead. But Cam and Natalie are already heading over to meet us there, so that's buggered that one up. We'll have to go sodding climbing now.

Daddyhole Main Cliff

After spending the night sleeping in the car in a Torquay housing estate, classy chaps that we are, we awake to a grey but dry morning and scramble down to the boulder beach at the base of the crag. It looms above through the murk. Steep and featured, tinted shades of pink and brown. We climb the classic route Gates of Eden, which is easy but exposed jug hauling apart from one absolute arse of a move on the first pitch. I slap and curse at a series of shit holds, feet flailing everywhere, eventually manage to grovel onto a slab and the belay above. Fuck me that was nails.

Pitch one just below the crux wall

Wrestling with the hard bit

Staples mincing across the traverse of pitch two

Staples runs the next two pitches into one, and enjoys the best climbing on the route. Really easy but massively exposed, traversing into a cramped niche on an arête, then up a corner crack to the top. We immediately head down to do another one, only this time I'll make bloody certain Staples leads the hard bit, the lazy bastard...

Cam and Natalie climbing a VS on the left hand side of the Main Cliff

The ominous corner of Triton

This'll do the job. Triton, an obvious corner feature. VS 5a. Hard for the grade. Perfect, that'll teach him a lesson. I jolly up easy vegetated blocks to a grotty belay below the main event. All the while the wind is rising and the sky darkening. Did I just feel rain? Maybe I'm imagining things. Either way it's not my fucking problem. Staples takes the rack and heads up the corner, and right on cue it starts to piss down with rain. His feet skid off the sheer walls, hands squelching uselessly inside the jamming crack. He puts about thirty-seven runners into a few feet of climbing. I'm laughing my head off and thinking how nice it'll be getting tippy-topped up, when there's a sudden heave on the ropes and I realise Staples has fallen off. Nah, that's impossible, he yells down, either we abseil off or you've got to do it. 

Staples preparing to throw in the towel

Oh fuck you, Staples you bastard, fuck you in the dick. I don't want to lead the bloody thing, it looks really hard. That's why I made you do it. I desperately hunt for anything I'd be happy to abseil off. There's nothing. Sod all. Only one way out of this mess and its up. So off I go, greasing off the soaking everything, getting pumped to buggery. Soon I reach the nest of gear and have no choice but to continue upwards, making progress just slightly faster than I slide back down again. A final hard move, I crank through a layback, grab a block, the fucking thing detaches in my hand, somehow I don't lob off with it. I crawl onto the grassy slope above leaving a trail of blood, tears, and dribble behind me. 

When you climb cracks oop norf your hands get all chewed up, it's called a 'gritstone kiss'. Well this wasn't a kiss. It was more like a 'being done up the arse for hours on end in a gloomy windswept travelodge just outside of Swindon'.....or something like that.

So, anyway, whatever. The forecast is even better Friday so we head up to the Culm Coast for a nice laid back day climbing slabs at Vicarage Cliff. It's a beautiful sunny day as we amble in to the crag along the coast path and hand over hand down the sketchy as fuck approach 'path'. Vicarage Cliff is a narrow fin of culm rising prehistoric from the sea, set against a pebble beach and towering piles of choss behind it.

The Culm Coast

The ominous rubble of Wreckers Slab

Natalie enjoying the pleasant approach to the crag

Vicarage Cliff

We spend an awesome few hours ticking routes on the slab while the tide is out. It's been years since I last climbed on Culm and I spend ages getting massive calf pump trying to fiddle wires in all the weird little cracks you get. The crux of most of the routes is pulling through the big overlap halfway up. Staples even manages to fall off one of them but God knows how. It's literally the easiest move in the world, you just stand up on a massive foothold, the massive nonce.

Cam leading a HS with about 3 runners in nearly 30m

Me on the classic Box of Delights (although I would've called it Box of Wanky Cracks)

Staples pulling through the tricky crux of Wellington's Stand

A couple of cool VSs at the end of the crag

You only get a couple of hours either side of low tide to climb here unfortunately

All too soon the tide comes back in again and we retreat back up to cliff top and wander back to the cars. After a quick discussion, and much checking of the forecast - which is completely toss - we decide to head over to Woolacombe where Staples' grandparents own a holiday flat. They've very kindly given us the keys for the weekend, and we waste no time in getting completely arseholed on beer and whiskey. Sometime later we stagger into the Red Barn and then onto another place that I can't remember fuck all about for some reason. Eventually we're thrown out and on the walk home Staples hears a crash, turns around to see me lying face down in the road and bleeding everywhere. After picking me up and helping me stagger back to the flat the muppet decides it's a perfect time to go surfing. Blind drunk, all on his tod at two in the morning, in massive waves being smashed into the coastline by Storm Cuntflaps. Every time the water hits him he pukes everywhere. Got to get your jollies somehow I suppose.

The next day the weather is predictably awful. Which is handy, as I'm so hungover I can't even move. Cam and Natalie make the sensible choice and clear off home, while me and Staples linger like a rancid fart in a lift. Eventually, after a fry up, we think it's a great idea to try a route at Baggy Point. The drive there is through narrow, twisting roads, lots of abrupt stops and corners, and I'm fighting a bitter war against a fountain of vomit. Upon arriving at the National Trust car park an attendant puts her hand through the window for the fee, and is luckier than she will ever know not to receive the contents of my stomach instead. We realise climbing on a sea cliff isn't the best idea right now, and skulk back to the flat instead.

So we've still got a couple of days to fill but the weather is not having any of it. After much checking of the forecasts we come to the conclusion that Chudleigh Rocks is our best bet for Sunday. Climbing wise you know you are in a dark place when polished shithole Chudleigh is your best option. In the list of things I really don't want to do, climbing there just squeaks in before hacking off my spuds with a rusty saw.

Staples leading some awful bloody route in a hailstorm

It's grey and ominous. The wind howls around the crag, which is just as polished and uninspiring as I remember. Staples gets halfway up a VDiff when the inneviatble happens, a massive storm erupts and pelts us with rain and hail. He struggles to the top on rock with the friction of soap then brings me up to share the misery. All the cracks have got snails in them. We trudge back down and contemplate doing another route, but more hail comes hurtling down, and we think fuck it lets get pissed instead.

The pinnacle of any climbers career, reaching the top of Chudleigh in shite weather

This is what I think of you Chudleigh

And on that note...

Grit Shit Innit

Apart from a few smeggy top ropes down Portland, I hadn't climbed anything on rock this year before a weekend jolly up to the Peak. So to no one's surprise I climbed like a sack of old turds. Here's a few photos from the trip...

The towering majesty of Birchen Edge

Cam soloing something easy

Good climbers make hard moves look easy, however shit climbers.....

Grovelling to the top

Cam on the same route, think it was VDiff, still felt hard

Cam thrashing up a jamming crack at Burbage

And another one

Easy soloing walls at Stanage

Classic David 'Snake Hips' Gainor high foot beta in action

Cam failing to jam his massive hand into a crack

Pat making an absolute Dogs Arse of April Crack

Me not doing much better on second

As does Cam

Me at the top of Robin Hoods Buttress, which thankfully isn't the gruesome struggle you expect from the deck

Cam fighting up Agony Crack

Pat having a go at Flying Buttress Direct

After time beyond human reckoning, and more tries than I could count, this was as far as he got, the massive wetty

So to make Pat feel better I get rescued off some sloping horror show called The Flange

3 gormless idiots at the top

Amazing sunset over the peak, good times