Every weekend it's the same, winter or summer, wet or dry, come 7pm on a friday the trickle of cars coming up the road swells to a torrent. Overcrowded Ford Transits swerve madly round the bends while battered minis vie with BMWs for posession of the same thin streak of twisted roadspace. The couple of acres of thinly disguised gravel that passes as a campsite gradually fills up with tents, lights come on in the climbing huts and a few hardy souls shoulder heavy rucksacks and set off for a night in the wilds. The majority however, preferring known quantities, head for the warmth of the pubs, where seating space is soon at a premium. The air fillls with chatter – traffic jams and near misses on the motorway, ambitious plans for the weekend. Casual acquaintances are renewed and old friends meet yet again. Well known names are bandied about - "Quite fancy The Crack", "Might go over to the Scafells", "Astra might be dry". Everyone seems to plan on good weather, despite long histories of disappointment. Hillgoers are eternal optimists, as "pessimists never get up anything", to quote a well-known sage.
Closing time comes, the barman shouts "Sup up and sod off" and the drinkers reluctantly stagger out into the cold, usually to find that the wind has risen and there are spitters of rain in the air. Alcohol and the pitch darkness always ensure that the walls between pub and campsite see a few collisions. Still the tide of vehicles flows up the dale, disgorging pairs, groups or hordes into the already crowded huts and campsite. The moon breaks through occasionally to give a glimpse of hope for the day to come.
The day dawns to lashings of hail and all over the valley plans are hurriedly adjusted. Huddled groups hang around the campsite hoping for an improvement, use the weather as an excuse for another brew and more chat. The hills being talked about shrink lower and the climbs slide down the grades. That many-headed monster "the traditional climb" begins to creep into the conversation, as the very Freudian pastime of squirming about in dark slippery slots is contemplated. Some masochist inevitably suggests climbing a real waterfall instead of just an incipient one – "We're going to get wet anyway, and all that water pouring past makes you forget that it's raining". They usually forget to mention that "past" tends to mean "over" in more than just the historical sense.
The hail slackens off, and soon multi-coloured lines of dots are setting off up the fellsides. More dots appear on the easy buttress behind the pub, some moving rapidly up towards higher things, others more slowly, linked by barely discernable ropes. As the rock dries ropes begin to extend up the steeper buttresses to the right, while further down the dale the craglets near the road get taken over by groups of identically clad schoolkids, who slither up the polished walls to the accompaniment of jeering comments from their audience.
"the easy Buttress behind the pub", now a polished horror.
Two thousand feet higher a tall narrow buttress leans against the fellside. Its dank north-facing grooves and swirling mists give it a primaeval feel, far removed from both its scrubbed and glossy cousins below and its clean and wholesome brother across the valley. On a day like this it comes into its own, as climbers used to stepping up on sun-warmed nodules are forced to rediscover the physicality of an earlier style of climbing. The plentiful supply of lubrication makes its greasy slabs and strenuous chimneys the scene of much thrutching and sprawling. Occasionally the clouds part to give glimpses across to the open, guileless crags on the sunny side of the dale.
"open, guileless crags"
There a more relaxed style of climbing prevails, although not yet the multi-coloured fashion parade of the outcrops. The owners of decorative tights seem to balk at slogging up a thousand feet of hillside before making contact with steep rock. Tattered breeches and baggy jumpers are still common, although no doubt diehard traditionalists would frown at the jingling array of protection devices being used on the routes they effectively soloed in their youth. A strong breeze and intermittent sunshine is drying the rock off nicely and by early afternoon the face is crowded. Relative novices get their first taste of real exposure on the open front face, while the more expert inch up the steeper grooves and overlaps futher left. Decades of use have left the rock clean, but not yet reduced it to the glossy sheen of more accessible crags, and its essential rough chunkiness still remains.
"a different animal"
Round the corner lies a different animal, a vegetated monster leering down on a deep tarn. The early morning rain has ensured that the steep ribs on its east wall are deserted, but the central part of the crag has a few pairs following the clean sections between the hanging gardens, on rock that resembles petrified Christmas pudding. A steady stream of people clamber up the shattered gangway that slants across the crag, merrily knocking loose stones down onto each other and over the (thankfully deserted) lower slabs. Reactions vary from near panic at the thought of being in the middle of a huge cliff to disappointment at the lack of real exposure. Further left an older group are struggling with the steep section of a dripping gully. The pile of discarded handholds at the bottom of the pitch grows larger as the leader fails to make any visible upward progress and his companions take refuge round the corner, out of the line of fire. Half an hour of digging produces enough useable holds to get the leader to a large chockstone and onto steeper but sounder rock, and it's time for somebody else to scrabble and scrape.
Sometimes it was even sunny🙂
Lower down, the valley's other major crag is popular too. A leader skitters nervously back and forth along the underside of an overhung wall, trying to psych up for an irreversible stride across nothingness. Below him another leader works methodically up a steep groove, each movement deliberate and controlled, unaffected by the drop at his heels. Some light entertainment is provided by a shouting match, as poorly placed runners combine with an overhang and a step around a corner and the leader grinds to a halt through rope drag. Wind and overhangs garble the messages as he tries to communicate the situation to his second. Inevitably every other climber on the crag can hear everything perfectly! Eventually a message gets through, the second climbs up to take off the first runner and upward progress is resumed. The air of concentration returns to the cliff, as each climber becomes absorbed in their own immediate challenges.
A late finish
As the shadows lengthen, or perhaps as the rain resumes, people gradually filter back down to the tents and huts, stoves are lit and the smell of cooking fills the air. Gourmet feasts are noticeable by their absence. A wave of thirst makes its way around the valley and the pubs begin to fill up again. Saturday night is rowdier than Friday, with occasional bursts of drunken singing, but things are almost always good-humoured. The occasional flare-up is quickly suppressed by those around, and the offenders are sent outside to cool off. Alliances are made, the mickey is taken and bullshit is freely dispensed. The reliability of information imparted declines over the evening on a logarithmic scale. The stories get wilder and more unlikely, the climbs done get longer and harder and the size of the mountains ascended grows by the minute. Oversized egos don't thrive though, as pomposity is punctured by a pithy comment and a steady cynicism rules the roost. Misfortunes are celebrated and laughter is frequent.
Eventually the pub throws everybody out into the cold again and groups filter back along the road. People blunder against each other sociably, and the ribbing that goes on is affably meant, and received in the same way. Even back at the campsite things stay relatively quiet, as the combination of alcohol and strenuous effort send most people off to sleep quickly. In the huts the evening lasts longer. Whisky is produced, and sometimes a guitar. People cluster around a fire telling ever more unlikely tales until enough bodies have trickled off to bed to make the effort of telling them no longer worthwhile.
It's not called a flood plain for nothing.
Sunday morning starts slowly. The mists are still hanging low on the fells and everything is damp, or sometimes more than damp as the stream floods. Hangovers and weather mean late starts as bleary-eyed faces struggle out of sleeping bags. The human tide that flowed up the dale on friday night now goes into reverse, but the weather makes it a much more drawn out process. Some leave after a leisurely breakfast, others after lunch in the pub, while others are determined to drag every last minute out of the weekend.
Most people seem content to mooch around the campsite or hut kitchen and wait for the pubs to open, but a few keen characters don boots and waterproofs and head off up the hill. Some of them even do what they had planned 😁. Others settle for a token hill then, their rat fed for the time being, retreat to join the festerers in the pub. Chat there is subdued, the energy sucked out by the weather, and there is space to stretch out as so many have already left. Thrown out at 3 o'clock into the rain again means more hanging around for some, as they wait for other members of their party to come down from the hill. It's not unknown for people even to make alcohol-fuelled trips up the little rocky hill that looms above the campsite.
Who would be daft enough to go up a hill with these reprobates?
Eventually everybody is back down, all is packed up and the last minibus trundles off down the road. By evening the dale has returned to its midweek slumber. The next morning the weather has inevitably improved and the sun shines on those fortunate few who don't have to return to work, or whose work is here. The conversation in the pubs is now of sheep and farming rather than rocks and epics, although the weather is common to both groups - this is Britain after all! Back in the towns and cities the weekend warriors start to plan the next weekend's adventures, full of unquenchable optimism that things willl work out better next time, and the cycle begins again.
I wrote this in the 1980's (just edited it a bit), but it could easily have been a decade earlier or later. Many will recognise the location!
You captured the 80s ethos admirably! I'll just add to that the noisy Londoners who never arrived until the early hours of Saturday morning and made a right racket! And I'm sure that was my Allegro Estate in the flooded campsite picture 😁