CHAPTER 36
That night was a private party, in effect, as all the pent-up stress of our exams erupted into collision and collusion with the joy of being reunited with such good friends.

Tessa’s mood was a revelation, so different from the hunched and damaged figure we had first met, and she was clearly very proud indeed of her developing chest. I looked down at my own and wondered if I could simply have offered a transplant, but then Em gave me a hug from behind, and I got a little distracted.

Can you believe that the main part of the evening consisted of two groups of people looking over maps? The girls were huddled round a road map discussing Morfa Harlech and Trearddur, we adults were swapping between climbing guides and the OS maps of the area trying to decide which rock or peak was to be the first we graced with our presence.

Roger was arguing with Tom, and both were being contradicted by Simon, and Tessa spared some of her beach-planning time to add her own little snippets and verbal prods. Simon wanted to some meandering and stupidly long route on Lliwedd, while Tom was angling for the Llanberis Pass and Roger was trying very hard to sell the Ogwen, while Tessa, of all people, was suggesting the long walk and towering route of Craig yr Ysfa.

It’s a peculiarity of us English climbers in Wales that we know the names, in Welsh, of none of the towns and all of the crags. We can’t, apparently, pronounce them, but hey, how many soft southerners can pronounce Skiddaw correctly? Or Bleaberry Tarn? In the end, we told Tessa to go away and stop being silly, and then they tossed coins for it, odd one out each time, and the Pass won.

It balanced nicely in the morning, with the three girls dragging Iain off on a tour of castles, beaches and ice creams, and we four men heading for Pen y Pass and the Three/Four/Five (depends on viewpoint) cliffs of Llanberis Pass. We ground up the hill to the viewpoint again, and then Roger turned left at the hotel and took us up to the summit of the pass, where there was an elderly youth hostel and a car park. Down we went to where the road made a zig zag over a stream, and past two huge boulders to a long lay by that we parked in. Towering over us was a huge and amazing piece of rock, split like an open book with a vertical corner. Simon pointed up.

“That’s Dinas y Cromlech, or just The Cromlech. See the corner? That’s Cenotaph corner, a Joe Brown route, and can you see on the right wall a sort of faint line? Cemetery Gates, Brown and the Villain”

“We doing those?”

“Bloody hell, no, you aren’t, and nor are we doing Right Wall! Tom and you can do Flying Buttress and see us at the top. We’re off up the Gates and Grond and we’ll meet you at the top”

It was a long drag up loose stuff to the clean rock, and we settled down to sort out the gear at the foot of the most intimidating cliff I had ever seen. Tom looked up our route, and said with a calm that belied the nature of the comment.

“Fancy leading?”

Bloody hell, aye! We pulled on our rubbers and Tom set up his ground anchor as I festooned myself with slings and metal, and he looked at me and said gently “Climb when ready”

Such a different feeling. I mean, the route was piss easy, big holds at an easy angle up a leaning pillar, and I made two pitches of it up to the top of the pinnacle. Tom joined me, and we took a while to look around the wall ahead of us and the expansive views out over the valley and the cars parked so far below. I caught a flash of reflected light, and realised somebody had binoculars or a telescope. Tom saw too, and grunted “Like the bloody Eiger”

“What do you mean?”

“Hotel under the Eiger Nordwand. They rent out telescopes so tourists can watch the climbers die”

Thanks, Tom. The next pitches were, to be honest, a little intimidating. We were on a little saddle, and the route rose up what seemed like a vertical wall to a flake, and the wall dropped sheer below our starting point. Tom noticed.

“Want me to lead the bit after the flake? You’ll kick yourself if you don’t do any of the wall”

It was actually quite easy, just the situation grabbing at my heels, and so when Tom arrived at the flake I insisted on keeping the lead, up the exposed wall to a slanting ramp, where I tied off to a jammed block and brought him up before I led the final pitch up a cramped and slanting chimney where I really, really hated my tits. The summit was a rounded piece of bare rock, and we sat in the sun as we awaited the boys.

“Well done, Steve, your first proper lead. That climb’s undergraded, in my view. The situations are really those a much harder climb would take you to, and it’s a mind game, climbing. Hey, you didn’t want to give me the lead, did you? Greedy!”

He turned a little more serious. “It’s addictive, lad. Just do me a favour, and don’t try pushing your boat too far out. You haven’t fallen yet, and that can make a difference to the way you see a route”

We were distracted by a stream of obscenities coming from over the edge of the rock on the valley side, and with a chorus of grunts and “cunts” Roger appeared, hauling over onto the summit and setting up a multi point belay. He grinned at us.

“Bit sort of strenuous that one! Simon, love, you will enjoy that, just make sure you save some strength for that darling jam. You’ll lose some skin, but it is just SO perfect!”

Theirs was a world apart from mine when it came to climbing. Tom just grinned, again, clearly reading my mind.

“Time, lad, time. You led that well, and it was your first, so think how much you have ahead of you. Let’s get down this gully and have a cuppa and see what’s next”

And that was half of my holiday. Wrinkle and Crackstone Rib in what I came to know simply as ‘The Pass’, and Tennis Shoe, Hope, Soapgut and Gashed Crag in ‘The Valley’; Christmas Curry and Poor Man’s Peuterey at Tremadog. Beer in the Vaynol at Nant Peris, where a short and frighteningly dour man with a beard and a flat cap was pointed out in whispers as ‘the Villain’. Days on the beach with my love and my brother, and other days high on mountain ridges in the company of true friends. None truer, it would be impossible, and still the sun beat down out of a burnt blue sky as we swam in the lakes and watched the buzzards and the ravens cruise the air.

All good things come to an end is a cliché that isn’t always true, but the holiday was at an end one day. We loaded up, and said our farewells, Iain seeming to take quite a while with Tessa, and I realised that he had quite the adolescent crush on her. The boys were all hugs and affection, but time was no longer our friend, and we had to be off.

I look back on that holiday as a jewel of memory, a moment of perfection in a less than perfect life. It was all I had hoped for, and the people around me were as close to perfection as I could have prayed for.

Once more we wound our way through the hills, and Tom was good enough to stop at our first viewpoint to let us take a few last pictures, and then it was A55 and then M6, past Lancaster and then swinging to the coast road to drop Em and me at Nana’s and Iain at his parents’ before Tom left Sally at home. He would return to pick up his minding of me after a night at hers, and I anticipated him returning a little the worse for wear.

We swayed and swang up the dale to Boot, happily picking out the familiar landmarks, and then we were outside the blackened shell that had been Nana’s cottage.