If you lead VS or above then Lundy is one of the best places in the UK to spend a week. I had a great trip there in 1996 with a group loosely based around Aberdeen Mountaineering Club, but which extended out to "the boyfriend of the sister of someone who worked with some of them", and vagrants like me. I qualified because I was at Aston University with two of them, and knew a few more. We had great weather nearly every day, and I ended up doing nearly all of the island's two/three star routes of HVS or below. It was a fantastic week, my best week's rock climbing ever.
In the days before mobile phones meeting up could be a bit hit and miss. We were booked on the morning ferry from Bideford so I knew that everybody would be somewhere nearby the night before, the question was where? The most likely spot to find a bunch of climbers was Baggy Point, so that was where I went. I couldn't see anybody I knew, but it was still early so I soloed a few things around the classic Scrattling Crack (V Diff). A few familiar faces soon turned up on the clifftop so Steve Ball and I climbed the prominent corner of Urizen (VS), then soloed the superb arete of Shangri La (HS) in the sunset. A good blether in the pub followed, with loads more people arriving, before the more skinflint of us spurned the expensive campsite and bivvied on the clifftop.
Soloing Shangri La, the shadows are Liz, me and Steve. Photo Liz Jolley
The ferry journey the next day all went smoothly, but once anchored off the landing beach we had to wait ages while another boat was unloaded. It was quite a hot day so several people jumped in and swam ashore, not realising that it would be several hours before they would be reunited with dry clothes! Eventually the rest of us were allowed ashore, and made the acquaintance of the Marisco Tavern while we waited for our tents and climbing gear.
I was itching to get on the rock, so persuaded Paul Lummy (the "boyfriend of......") to go and do a route. I had read that Diamond Solitaire was the best VS on the island, so that had to be the target, on the amazing strut of Flying Buttress. Paul had only recently started climbing so it was definitely my lead. The 4b slab of the second pitch was lovely, poised above an overlap so quite airy, but with lots of small holds, good friction and even the odd runner. I loved it. Paul did too, and it wasn't even nearly dark yet, so we went a bit further up the island and raced up the Devil's Slide, the island's "Classic Rock" route. It still wasn't dark and the big slab looked so good that I was tempted to try and solo Satan's Slip (E1), but didn't get the line right so was really on Fear of Faust next door. This is also given E1 but has a shorter but harder crux. I remember fingering a set of small pockets on slightly less frictional granite than the usual in the deepening dusk and deciding that discretion was the better part of valour. The Devil's Slide original is only a few feet right at that point so I finished up that. I'm not sure whether soloing down the bottom half then up the top half counts as a solo ascent? We just made the pub for closing time.
Gordon Scott on The Black Hand (VS), Eclipse is the arete on the left.
The highlight of the first full day was the lovely slabby arete of Eclipse (VS 4b) with Gordon Scott and Mel Dyce, although I really enjoyed soloing Battery Rib (VD) too. I wasn't 100% sure that I was in the right place for the latter, and the start was intimidating, so the huge jugs and airy rib above came as a relief. It was so good that I did it again later in the week and it was still fun even when I knew where I was 😁.
Monday was the best day of the trip. Mel and I did the superb corner line of Albion at sustained VS, then I led Satan's Slip, in the right place this time. There was a 90 foot section of delicate tiptoeing on tiny holds and friction, with only one proper runner (and three pretend ones), but as this is my favourite type of climbing I felt quite at home and emerged at the top claiming "it's only 4b". I soloed it later on in the week, after settling the score with Fear of Faust, and still think they are different grades, but 4b was pushing it a bit. I would give Satan's Slip HVS 4c and agree with the guidebook's E1 5a for Fear of Faust.
Albion (VS), with Satan's Slip the pale streak up the middle of the slab. Photo Liz Jolley
After a relaxing trip up Walrus (S) on Seal Slab, with loads of the eponymous mammals looking up curiously ("are they going to fall in and join us?"), we went looking for a VS called Norseman. At that point I still only had the old 1985 guide, which just said "Climb the corner", with no diagrams or pictures, so we assumed that the prominent corner we could see was Norseman. We duly climbed it, with quite a tricky move to get round a chockstone, thinking it quite tough for VS, much harder than Satan's Slip. Back in the pub that evening we were shown the picture of Norseman in the Pat Littlejohn Selected Climbs guidebook and it clearly wasn't the route we had climbed 🙄. In the new guide it was obvious that we had climbed an unfrequented HVS called Portia. We are still the only UKC log for it 27 years later! Glad we did it though, it's better than such neglect would imply.
Tuesday was very windy, with scattered showers, so Liz Jolley and I went for a walk up the more sheltered east side of the island. Near the north end we came across two inland buttresses (the Knights Templar, but we didn't know that because I still didn't have a proper guidebook). They looked great and it wasn't raining so we started soloing up the nearest one. 40 feet up it got harder. Neither of us had brought our gear, harnesses or rock boots, but a rummage in sacks produced a 40 foot length of rope that had been chopped by stonefall from a longer one, two slings and an ancient clog 'cog' hex. We tied directly onto the rope in ye olde style and climbed the rest of it in three very short pitches. It was so much fun that we went back down and cllimbed the other Knight in the same style, a really fun adventure. I had been going to abandon the Cog but after this I decided to keep it and have since placed it hundreds of times. It's undoubtedly the best 50p I've ever spent (from a bargain bin in Outside).
Chris Dodd on Immaculate Slab
The most exciting route of the week came the next day, with Liz, Chris and Emily. Immaculate Slab felt very committing, an HVS that thinks it's an E1. You can't see the route from the abseil point so there's an uncertainty as to whether you are in the right place. Emily hadn't abseiled before, so the free hanging drop to the sea was quite an initiation. You then go round a blind corner to a narrow ledge squeezed between a just-off-vertical wall and the crashing ocean.
Emily Jolley belaying me on Immaculate Slab. Photo Liz Jolley
The route starts up a stepped flake, mostly blind, but with little cracks behind the top of each step where you can place a small wire. The trouble is that each one lifts out once there's a runner above it. Emily wasn't sure what climbing etiquette was in cases like this so whispered to Liz "Should I tell him all his runners are falling out?". I was only too well aware of that, of course, but each wire protected the move next to it and I always had one left. Finally I got a proper nut in for the move up onto the slab itself and from then on it was a joy, all shapes and angles up the corner of the slab, with a nice 5a move to finish. A proper sea cliff route. By comparison Holiday in Cambodia (HVS 5a) in the afternoon was a cruise. Chris led the steeper well protected bit and I led the technically easier but run out slab, which was definitely the right way round.
Chris Dodd on Quadratus Lumborum (S). Mel led this pitch.
One of the more outspokenly antediluvian members of the group had made a bet that none of the women on the trip would lead a VS before he did. That couldn't be left unchallenged so Mel led me up Capstan Arete (VS 4b), a lovely route. We then did a bunch of others nearby before I led Formula One (HVS 5a). Liz had said that this was her favourite route ever, and it was indeed a gem, sustained and quite intimidating at the move out of the cave, but never too hard. Chris was just breaking into leading E1 at the time so was trying Indy 500 next door. Just as I finished he came off and took a mighty swing that only Liz's alert belaying stopped from becoming a ground fall. He earned the "Lob of the Week" award.
Chris Dodd on Indy 500
The prize for the best epic though went to Steve Ball and Simon Lee on Asafoetida (E1 5b). To get to it you descend some very steep rubble, where they had fixed a rope, then abseil to a sea level ledge. They forgot to unclip their ropes from the fixed rope before abbing down them, so couldn't pull them through, leaving our heroes still attached to the cliff top by 200 feet of stretchy rope. Prussiking back up took them most of the morning, made worse by the fact that several other members of the group were doing Albacore next door so were ideally positioned to comment on their predicament 😁. To add insult to injury, by the time they had assembled themselves and their ropes at the foot of the route the tide had dropped considerably (Lundy has a 40 foot tidal range, one of the highest in the world). Instead of starting with a hardish move where a fall would get you wet, whoever led it was going to be faced with a potential fall onto nasty boulders. Neither of them fancied leading it so the others dropped them a top rope. The BBC were making a film in the pub that night so Simon attempted to make up for the embarrassment and get into the film by playing the piano and climbing the wall up to high window to smoke a cigar. It wasn't the image the film makers wanted though, and the finished product only featured a brief shot of a group of us having a beer and chatting.
Liz and Emily at the campsite
Liz and I couldn't resist squeezing in a last route on the leaving day, and did Ulysses Factor, then graded VS 4c, now deservedly given HVS 5a. The crux is just off the ground, so fine for me leading, but the next runner is twenty feet left and the ground drops away, so Liz was faced with a huge swing if she fell off. Handily the pair following us gave her a back rope, and after that we raced up the rest of the route. It only gets one star, and indeed some bits of it are nothing special, but it's five pitches in a great setting and I absolutely loved it.
Lundy is an amazing place with an atmosphere all of its own; Atlantic, remote-feeling, unspoilt, quirky, UK-but-not-UK. It's owned by a charity called the Landmark Trust, who are committed to preserving its character, and the number of visitors allowed at any one time is strictly limited. As a result, although this trip was in the nineties I suspect the place hasn't changed much. The climbing will certainly still be as good. Thoroughly recommend a trip.
Emily and Mel on the Devil's Slide. Photo Liz Jolley
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