CHAPTER 7
I was up early that Saturday morning giving my harp a quick cuddle before pulling on my climbing tights and a T-shirt over a sports bra. I wasn’t big there, but it felt like part of the uniform: fit, outdoor-sporty woman, ready to brave whatever crag the Woodruffs had in mind. I was munching toast while packing my gaiters into a day sack when Dad arrived, and he shook his head.

“You won’t need them, love. No mud to worry about. Harness, rock boots, hat, helmet and jacket. You can manage in trainers for the walk in as well. Want some lunch making?”

“Please!”

He busied himself with loaf and ham as I set a flask to warm ready for filling with tea, and there was a knock on the door. I heard Mam answer it, and then, to my astonishment and delight, she brought Alys into the kitchen, not without a meaningful look at Dad. My friend was in outdoor kit herself, with her own small rucksack, and after Mam had poured out more tea, we all settled around the dining table.

My mother was straight to the point.

“Not going to preach, girls. Alys, we had a chat last night, your Mam and me, and she told me about what your shrink was saying”

My face must have betrayed my thoughts, for Mam turned her gaze onto me.

“What? Because we’re adults, we don’t have friends? Nansi was my first friend when I moved here. Still my best one. We talk. Anyway, yes, she has seen how you two are as well. As I said, I am not going to preach, just remind you that there are people out there who don’t see things like we do. You know that. So I am simply asking that you don’t be open about things too quickly. That’s it. So, part of today’s plan is to let you two have a bit of you-time. Dad will drop you both off, pick you up at five, and we’ll have a meal in Llanberis tonight. Mr and Mrs Woodruff will meet you at their crag. Got your chalk bag, love?”

“I only use that on the Brenin wall, Mam”

“Take it for today, love. You sure you won’t be bored, Alys?”

“Got my bins and my camera. Be plenty of stuff to see”

Dad started to laugh at that one.

“Oh, right, how did that go when we first met, Pen?”

Mam shook her head.

“Dad means ‘tight shorts’, girls. I hope you have other things in mind to watch, Alys”

I was coming to love how she blushed. We finished our tea, and I packed a large box of sandwiches, two flasks and a couple of bar towels Dad handed me, ‘For your boots’. He drove us by way of Llandygai over the higher ground towards Llanberis, turning off for Deiniolen and then Dinorwig, which we went straight through, passing below a steep hillside littered with slate mining waste. There was a long layby, surfaced with more of the broken slate, and a ladder stile over a wire fence, a familiar van already parked there. Dad helped us get our bags from the boot, then hugged each of us in turn.

“We’ll pick you up around five for a meal, girls. Just walk up there between the two fences, and that grey stuff is the crag. Long Red and her man will be up there already. Enjoy!”

I was a little apprehensive as we crunched our way along the path, but it was only about two hundred yards or less until we were spotted by the Woodruffs. Steph was as effusive as ever, hugging both of us in welcome, and then turning back to Alys.

“I’ll keep this in our language for now. Geoff doesn’t, okay? I am not being nasty, but I can tell how your life is going, love. I had a little chat with Penny, and I’ll be honest, it just confirms something I already knew”

“What is that, Mrs Woodruff?”

“How very, very lucky I have been. I mean, both of my shrinks ended up coming to my wedding! Anyway, out here, we’re all proper outdoorsy crag rats, so it’s Steph for me, Geoff for my man over there wondering where the flasks of tea have got to”

Alys laughed, and shook her head.

“I’m no crag rat!”

Steph grinned, in a slightly twisted way.

“Just pretend. And my evil plan to take over world climbing might still work! And yes, we do have our own flasks, and the stove is in the van if we need more”

We started with a round of the tea, Alys peering about for whatever wildlife she might spot, while I rewound what Steph had said, how she had chosen her words. There had been nothing there about ‘choices’, nor of ‘changes’, but a simple comment about how things were going. From the way Alys’ eyes were following the woman, I could tell that she had caught the phrase the way I had. Either that, or she was trying to spot the ‘man’ in the woman.

As we drank, Steph was pointing out features and routes, while I was taking in the steep-and-shininess of the rock. This was meant to be a treat? She indicated a slope of rubble rising up to the right, speaking English for Geoff’s benefit.

“Couple of easier routes up there, Enfys. We’ll start there, okay?”

“What do you mean ‘easy’? None of this looks easy!”

“Didn’t say ‘easy’, did I? First one is a Severe, sort of. Tech grade is 4a.

I echoed her words ‘sort of’, and she pointed out the bolts in the rock.

“No nuts or cams, just quickdraws for clipping the bolts. Sport climbing, not traditional. We’ll do a couple of trad routes later, if you like”

Alys was looking puzzled.

“4a? Severe?”

Geoff explained.

“The word describes the soul of the climb: how scary, now bad a fall would be. The tech, the number, is how difficult the hardest move is. A flight of stairs is 1a, a ladder might be 2a, depending. Goes up 1a, b, c, 2a, b, c and so on. Same tech if you do it from standing on the ground, or a mile up with no rope”

Steph was already hanging her quickdraws on her harness.

“Rock boots and harness on, love, and off we go. Don’t forget your chalk bag”

Up the rubble to a steep, grey, slippery slab.

“Jagged Face, Enfys. Low grade for slate, so there will be holds, and those holds will be very precise, very sharp. Edge your boots rather than smear them, and…”

She showed me an odd grip with her fingers, where she brought her thumb over the tips of the first three.

“Crimping. Small holds, but sharp ones?”

She quickly set me up with a ground anchor, and once everything was clipped together, looked at me with another grin.

“Ready?”

“No”

“Tough! Climbing”

As I had come to expect, she simply floated up the slab, aiming for one of the buts of shiny metal screwed right into the rock. A pause, a swift movement of her right hand, and a call of ‘Runner on!’, and she was off again. As per the usual sequence, I followed up, collecting her quickdraws as I went, and while it wasn’t easy, it was absorbing. More than that, it made sense. The route was well above anything I had ever managed before, but once my mind had worked out the way things worked, it made sense In a way climbing never had before that route.

It wasn’t about brute strength, it wasn’t about pulling on handles; it was a dance, my own body as my partner. I didn’t grab and pull, but rather glided from one spot to another, on a sweep of rock that offered no places for the nuts and cams Dad had lent me. I found myself wondering how the climb would feel without the rope, and when I finally arrived, all too soon, at Steph’s stance, I was grinning.

“So you do like this, then?”

I was nodding, stammering about purity and simplicity, while she just grinned back.

“Want to try something a bit harder, trad route?”

“How hard?”

“Not telling you!”

We bounced laughing down the rubble slope to where Geoff was chatting with Alys, and the latter grinned at me, joy in her eyes.

“Did Steph tell you that there’s only a bloody peregrine nest over there? And there’s a pair of chough!”

Geoff chuckled.

“Hairy and I have a few friends who like that sort of thing, love. We know a few places…”

There was a flicker in his expression, before his smile returned.

“How did she do, love?”

Steph cackled, theatrically.

“Cunning plan, take over world, etc, etc, Nyahaha!”

Geoff sighed, just as theatrically.

“Normal stuff, then? What you doing next?”

“Equinox, I think. Then Solstice”

“Okay. Alys and I will take a walk down towards the blast shelter; see what else is about. Serengeti later?”

Steph nodded, turning to look hard at me.

“I really think so, love”

All I will say about the next two climbs is that they were steep. The first finished with a very odd move, where I had to stick my right leg out level with my hip and do a sort of leaning away move, while the second had a really, really hard move that I scrabbled hard at, being lowered down on the rope three times, until I finally caught the hold at the top of the flake and then the foothold on its edge, and was able to stand and move up.

‘Serengeti’ involved a reasonably long walk into the main quarry, onto a plain of broken slate surrounding a single huge blade of slab. Steph squeezed my shoulder.

“Change of plan here, love. I am not climbing, and you will have two ropes. I’ll walk round and top-rope you, but you will carry a full rack of gear. What I want you to do is to place runners as you climb, and clip in the rope below you. Geoff will follow, collect the gear, and tell you how good it was. Sound good?”

The route, Seamstress, was a thin slanting crack, and as I climbed, I settled the smallest of wires into the spaces I found, remembering to extend them with quickdraws. The crux was a slight overlap, where there was the thinnest of steps up, but I managed to keep my cool, finishing the route before Geoff followed in a steady and methodical way that was worlds apart from Steph’s antigravity style. Lots of high-fiving followed, before we all skittered down the descent path to Alys. I was eager to find out how good my placements had been, and I needed the praise, because, well, in front of Alys.

Geoff was serious in his comments, but mostly positive. However…

“Just that Number Two Walnut at the overlap, Enfys. If somebody fell there, the pull is straight down, not back along the crack. That one would have lifted out. The rest were great”

Steph smiled at her husband, then turned to me.

“Enfys, what’s the hardest route you’ve done before today?”

“Um, V Diff, and 4b on the Brenin wall”

“Well… Jagged Face, 4a. Equinox, Very Severe 4c. Solstice, Hard Very Severe, 5a. Seamstress, another HVS, 4c, but you placed gear on it. How do you feel?”

I felt the quarry spinning around me.

“HVS? Five a?”

Geoff was looking at me, real affection in his eyes.

“Would you have tried them if we had told you what grade they were?”

Alys interrupted, and while she wasn’t a climber, her comment showed not only how well she had been listening, but how well she knew me.

“Enfys, if they had told you what grade those climbs were, would you have tried them?”

“Well…”

“Did you climb them?”

“Well, yes… Alys?”

“That’s my name”

“Thank you. And sorry for being so… for leaving you alone”

She looked at Geoff, and something passed between them, before she smiled back at me.

“Really? Peregrine nest, chough, really REALLY interesting way the plants are coming back here?”

A pause, a quick glance at our two friends, and then an arch look, as she held up her camera.

“Anyway, I remembered what your parents said about photography and tight shorts!”

We spent the rest of our time with me trying much harder routes on a top rope, and failing, Steph pointing out how I could now see how the hard stuff (E bloody 5!) worked as a problem.

“Before, you saw it as a blank wall. Now, you can see the route, see the sequence, see why you fell off. Got me?”

I just nodded, and we set off back to the Bus Stop, Alys…

We had only walked about twenty yards when she took my hand in hers, and it wasn’t like it had been in the Cow, for this was daylight, and out in the open, and my heart was in my mouth once again.

We had time to brew a fresh round of tea at the van before my parents arrived, and all that time, I had another hand in mine. Could life get any better?

Alys and I slipped into the back of our car, my hand still in hers, as Steph’n’Geoff loaded the kit into their van, and then we worked our way through the back roads to Llanberis, where I half expected us to park by the lake and walk over to Pete’s Eats. Instead, Dad continued through the town, pulling in at the Royal Victoria hotel. It wasn’t going to be a Big Jim or a burger, then. Mam showed how well she knew me, turning round in her seat to smile at both of us.

“Still birthday treat, love, but last one we have planned. Or would you have preferred a fry-up at Pete’s?”

Alys’ hand tightened a little on mine as she burst into laughter, then looked sidelong at me as she calmed again.

“I suspect Enfys will cope, take one for the team, that sort of thing!”

Another wave of laughter, and then, as the van pulled up alongside us, she let go of my hand, and of course I understood. Too public there, too risky. We walked over to the entrance, where Dad said the necessary, “Hyatt; we have a reservation, party of six?”

We were seated in a sort of conservatory, light and airy, and the food on offer was amazing. As Steph listed the routes we had climbed, and my parents oohed and aahed in appreciation, I found myself watching Geoff, and had a sudden moment of realisation: Apart from following me up Seamstress, and some top-roped silliness on an E6 on the Seamstress slab, he had done no climbing at all. The entire outing had been for my benefit, and I found myself becoming embarrassed, almost ashamed, at how I had monopolised his wife’s attention. There was a depth of love there that I found myself envying, and it was of a kind with the love for my father that Mam had shown in ‘leaving’ him. If I could find something like that in my future…

“Excuse me, don’t want to be rude”

It was our waitress, speaking directly to Steph, in Welsh.

“Could I ask---have you stayed here, in the hotel, I mean? Few years ago? I, um, I remember the hair. Sorry!”

Steph smiled back at her, and linked hands with her man.

“You’re not being rude, Miss. You’re absolutely right---we had our honeymoon here, and very nice it was too”

“Thank you! I didn’t want to intrude. He doesn’t speak the language, does he?”

“No, not more than a few words and phrases”

“Right. I did wonder, seeing as you were all, all the rest of you, were speaking it. You’re not local, are you? Hwntw?”

“Not really. Far West, I am, rather than South Walian. These are all locals, though”

“Then I shall switch. Courtesy, ah? Ladies and gentlemen, we have some specials on the dessert menu”

She handed out a few slips of paper, then smiled directly at Geoff.

“Welcome back, sir. I was doing breakfast duties when you last stayed here, and I remember you both. Are you likely to be staying here again, because if you do, we offer discounts for regular visitors”

Geoff chuckled.

“Hardly regular, with one stay, are we?”

The waitress grinned.

“We define ‘regular’ how we want, sir. The two of you left us all smiling when you were here before, and that is not something we get that often in our work”

Geoff reddened slightly, the depths of his very well concealed shyness clearing for a few seconds, and then he grinned back, and ordered Eton mess.

It seemed that life could get better.