2014 Year of the squirrel

Now that I'm approaching 47 it's obvious to me that you can't climb all the time or you end up injured. So you have 2 options. 1. You can start doing some charitable work or 2. You can spend over £1000 on a push bike, cover yourself with lycra and turn into a strava-obsessive, road-hogging, self righteous bastard. Not that I hate all cyclists but one of the few times I've had road rage was on the quiet roads of Little Langdale when I was forced to get out of my Land Rover and threaten to throw a cyclist over a wall. So obviously I chose charitable work and joined the Westmorland Red Squirrel Society, my role is to kill grey squirrels in Langdale and surrounding areas. My wife is against guns and threatened it was her or a gun. So I just didn't tell her and managed to keep it a secret until I'd collected at least 4 guns. Now, a year later, I've shot 142 greys including a mythical 'white' grey squirrel. If the red squirrels of Little Langdale could make bunting, I'm sure they'd be hanging it out for me on my return home from this trip to South Africa. My wife remained opposed until we started seeing reds in Little Langdale for almost the first time in years.

My number one fan

I don't really set myself yearly goals, just generally try to start the year in Pembroke and see how I'm going. So I was happy to do my first E8 of the year at Easter with the scary Daddy Cool at Carreg-y-Barcud, North Pembroke. I didn't find the climbing on it too hard which gave me a boost and fired me on for Scafell and repeating Craig Matheson's great new route from last year, Thy Will be done, E8 6c on the left hand side of the East Buttress, up the seam between Trinity and Incubus. The climbing is like the upper tier of Malham, like doing an 8a but just on RPs. If you can climb E8 on Scafell you feel pretty invincible. I had a quick look at the route when it was still too cold in early May but then I had to get 2 weeks working at Chelsea Flower show out of the way before I could get back to do it.

Rain at Chelsea

Chelsea was great this year, working again with my favourite designer, Cleve West, who we won best in show with in 2012. The theme for 2014 was a paradise garden and we won gold again. We were a bit disappointed not to get to the grand prize but we were possibly second and our stonework and build quality got the highest marks under the new marking system.

Stonework in the finished garden

The next thing I had to get my head around was starting again on wall repairs for Natural England on the Fairfield horseshoe wall, with my apprentice (my cousin, Will). In a bad summer, this job would be your worst nightmare but fortunately we had the endless summer in 2014. Will has improved a lot
since last year ,which is good as his apprenticeship is partly funded by the Princes Trust via the Dry-stone walling association. As the country's first dry stone walling apprentice we were both invited to meet Prince Charles and convince him to continue to provide funding. The most astonishing thing about Prince Charles is that he is much smaller than expected. We had a really good talk. I'm not sure how much he understood but the funding will continue! I didn't let Will say too much as when his college tutor asked him what he'd learnt so far his answer was 'walling and shit'. It's made me feel my age having Will as an apprentice as I don't even know the names of the drugs he's taking on the weekends.

As the summer got longer and drier I thought it was possibly a rare opportunity to have another look at Dave MacCleod's new route on Hells Lum, To Hell and Back. I have tried to look at this route before on 2 previous trips. I found the climbing relatively okay apart from one bunched up rock over but the conditions have always been fickle to impossible, with snow melt and water being blown across the wall from the neighbouring gully. Even when hot sunny weather has been forecast I always found bad conditions. But this year was different, when I went up in July conditions were absolutely perfect. A little bit of stretching made the rock-over easier so I decided to go for the lead on the first day. I felt it would be possible to fall safely from my physical crux and I didn't find the out and out death move too hard, possibly because I'm a bit taller than Dave Mac. I didn't test the fall and was happy to do the route first go. If it's E10 or not, only time will tell. At my age I'll take what I'm given especially as I have to take the E5s I sometimes struggle on too.

After my success in the Cairngorms I felt I was on a roll and one of the routes I have always wanted to climb is the Great Escape on Arran. And, like the film, a big part of it is about a guy on a motorbike. So one morning at 3am, Mary and I set off for a day trip on my Triumph Tiger to catch the 1st ferry over to Arran.  In retrospect it was a fantastic day but at the time we were so tired we kept falling out with each other. The next time we went we were better prepared but I made the fatal mistake of waiting for the second day for my redpoint. The good forecast was blown away by winds from hurricane Bertha so we were scuppered. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get back there before the midges come out this spring.

Chelsea Flower Show 2012

Certainly one of the highpoints of my year was working on a show garden at Chelsea Flower Show. I was contracted in to work for Steve Swatton, the landscaper in charge of Cleve West's Brewin Dolpin garden. My work colleague Max Nowell and I were responsible for all the stone work in the garden. Cleve West's garden won Best in Show in 2011 but no garden designer had ever won this two years running. The gardens must all be built within 2 weeks so work starts at 7 in the morning when the site opens and finishes at 8pm. This year was especially difficult for most folk as it rained almost continually but this gave us an advantage as I've worked in the rain for most of my life.

Me on the trestle, looking over the wall

Wetter than the Lake District

 The stone we were using was limestone from Gloucester which was easy to work and looked beautiful in the walls. We built 2 pillars for gateposts, 4 side pillars, some interior walls and the big stone feature which was an old stone well head mounted on steelwork to look like it was hanging in front of the wall. After 10 manic days we knew we were on track to complete the garden on time which took some of the pressure off and I was on my way home after 14 days, a few days before the show opened. My family, who have never seen a flower show before spent hours watching footage of Chelsea 2012 and on the second day, the medals were announced. Our garden won a Gold Medal and Best in Show! My mum was very proud and told everyone that 'my' garden had won. The experience was wonderful and Cleve West was a really nice straighforward man, a real joy to work for and his gardens are beautiful.

The winning garden

Climbing again!

It's been a slow recovery and I don't know if my shoulder will ever be perfect again. But considering I couldn't pick up a cup of tea from the floor beside the bed from March until September 2011, by November I'd teamed up with Stuart Wood and flashed an E6 on the main wall in Trowbarrow Quarry. I was pretty happy with this especially because it was the first route I'd led since the operation. It was up a vertical wall which put minimal strain on my shoulder. I was hoping for another cold and snowy winter to get back into the full swing of things but the highlight of the Lakeland winter turned out to be the winter ethics debate and a nighttime ascent of Raven Crag Gully with Mark Greenbank.

I started work again in January which was possibly the best rehab for my arm. I had a lot to catch up on so just managed to keep ticking over with a bit of training. By March I could climb my arete problem on Langdale boulders again which at one point I thought I'd never be able to do again. In April I did the second ascent of Pretty in Pink on Deer Bield. This 15m route follows one of the most stunning and fiercest finger cracks in Britain. Opened by Paul Ingham in 1986, it's been unrepeated for 16 years. Originally graded E6 6c, it's more like E7 7a and at least French 8a.

2011 - Shoulder operation

Time for a story.
This is that story.
Back in the winter of 2011, it was very very cold for a very long time. And there was lots of snow and ice in the mountains of Scotland and the Lake District. Many exciting routes were being climbed but I was working on a stone walling project in Kent. In early March I came home and as I was so keen to climb we set off to Craig Meggy as the ice had been reported to be really good and fat. But when we got there, it wasn't so we drove back home and then next day went bouldering at Caley in Yorkshire. Because I hadn't climbed for a while I was very keen and ran around all day doing lots of problems. I was so keen that even when everyone else was packing up I tried to do a few more problems. I balanced on a boulder with one foot in a tree to check out the top holds on a problem when my foot slipped out the tree and i fell onto the path. I tried to roll to avoid landing on my head so landed on my shoulder instead. Which went crunch. We drove home, stopping to buy some frozen cauliflower to ice my shoulder from the Tesco express on the way.
Kendal hospital were lovely and said it wasn't broken but recommended a scan. The next day Lancaster Royal Infirmary said it was fine and to take some painkillers. This is what I wanted to hear. Also because I needed to be back at work in Folkestone.
On getting back to work and realising I couldn't lift my hammer I set about trying to get a scan from Lancaster. A few weeks later, refusing to give me a scan, Mr Rhodes said he knew exactly what was wrong with my shoulder - it was my upper biceps tendon which had ruptured. He was correct, only it had ruptured 5 years previously and the current injury was entirely unrelated, except it was on the same arm. Time for a second opinion.
Enter the Funkmeister.
Anyone who has had any shoulder surgery will know (or will wish they knew) Professor Leonard Funk. On my first consultation, before the scan, he told me exactly what was wrong; ruptured supraspinatus and torn subscapularis and that I would need surgery if I ever wanted to pick up a hammer again. I wasn't too bothered about the hammer but the thought of being able to climb again was quite nice. A scan confirmed his diagnosis and thus began the long wait for NHS surgery.
The highlight of my climbing summer was doing the Old Man of Hoy (and running back in time to catch the 10am ferry off Hoy). The next weekend we did the Cuillin ridge on the Saturday, climbed at Reiff on Sunday and on the Monday walked up Suilven getting back just before the path was engulfed in flames! Not usually a problem in Scotland.

Finally in September, after a summer of following my lovely wife up routes and using my hammer by resting my elbow on my hip, I had my shoulder repaired at Wrightington Hospital, knowing I wasn't going to be able to climb or work for the next 4 months. My main concern was that Professor Funk seemed to have a curious inability to tell right from left - and more than twice I'd had to correct the notes which seemed to suggest they were going to operate on my left shoulder.

The day after the operation i could barely lift my arm out of its sling, but a couple of days later i could lift it above my head which seemed pretty promising. The trouble was, we live in Little Langdale and I couldn't drive so there wasn't a right lot to do. Inspired by an article by Peter Fleming in a Fell & Rock journal i went walking the Lakeland fells in search of 7 recorded stone fox traps. Knowing the Lakes quite well, I managed to find what I believe are several more traps.

All the walking around kept me reasonably fit and after a couple of weeks I started doing a bit of running. And a bit is enough for anyone.  On my first run around Tilberthwaite from Little Langdale i was stopped by some security guards from the set of Snow White and the huntsman which was being filmed in Cathedral quarry. What they failed to understand was that they were in Little Langdale where nobody tells me where I can and can't go. The next day I saved their bacon when I drove their 'stuck' Landrover out of a ditch. The boredom of being stuck at home reached a climax around this time and I started stalking the security men through the woods, seeing how close I could get to them without them knowing. I could get within a few metres. But this was too easy. I needed a trophy so I snuck past them one night and released one of their massive helium balloons from its anchors. They were lucky because it got caught by the roof of the quarry. I thought this was funny and my wife decided I was definitely going mad.
The highpoint of my madness came one Sunday morning when Mary was driving me over to the Duddon so I could walk home. We were stuck for miles behind a deliberately obstructive cyclist who when asked to pull over stopped in the middle of the road in front of us, threatening to stay there all day if he wanted to. I couldn't open my door because it was too close to the wall so I climbed out the window of the car, arm still in a sling, and ran towards him threatening to throw him over the wall. He cycled off at speed and pulled over in the next laybye.
Luckily I could drive again soon after this.

First blog post

This week I use a 'thin end of the wedge' argument and started a blog. Must be getting old. The high point of the week was getting Early Morning Rain by Gordon Lightfoot pretty dialled on the guitar.