This will be the shortest section of my climbing emails, and focuses mainly on a little known area nestled on the border of Wales and England. The River Wye (or Afon Gwy in Welsh) is the fifth-longest river in the UK. It flows for over 200km from Plynlimon in mid Wales down the to the Severn estuary. A good deal of the river marks the border between England and Wales. So I guess the crag is in fact in England being on the east bank. In this email I will also touch on a few other locations in relatively close vicinity and in a way this email encompasses some of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ of my experiences in this neck of the woods:
We start with the ‘Bad’. Further west from the Wye Valley on the southern coast of Wales is a great sea cliff area known as Pembrokeshire. I attempted on a few occasions to get here but never made it and when I did the weather turned on us. On one attempt I drove out with Johnny, Scott and Vince in the car, we left London late and in the darkness the other three snoozed practically the whole way. It was late and to avoid white line fever I munched on the very delicious packet of chocolate hobnob biscuits that Johnny had brought. We got there late and pitched our tents in torch light. Then I fell into a deep sleep only to be woken by that familiar and dreaded sound of rain falling on the tent, light to start with but it soon increased in intensity. Morning came but the light didn’t follow as it should and we were shrouded in mist. I’ve included this image for a few reasons, most importantly it shows my ‘Wendy-tent’ on the left (the ‘Cheese-block’ belonged to Vince). I had this tent for approx. 20 years and I can remember blustery trips to the lakes where the new-fad dome tents would crumple under the winds, due to being poorly put up, while my trusty tent, which gained scorn from many, never faltered. Better still in conditions such as below it also never leaked, the Cheese-block unfortunately didn’t fare so well. Johnny was in his Gore-Tex bivvy bag on this trip, which is when I decided I wouldn’t mind getting one. In the morning he awoke to the gentle nuzzling of sheep, they were either nibbling or licking the water off his bivvy bag:
On days like this there really was only one thing to do and that was to head to the closest wall and climb indoors. We hoicked the considerable distance to Bristol to climb as the wall there was supposed to be pretty good (and it was). It was on this journey that Johnny asked where the biscuits were, and I had to confess to having eaten the whole packet the night before – oops. As the rain continued to come down we climbed in the dry, leading of course. The rain was supposed to abate and improve the next day so stuck it out and went back to our tents. The next day was better but not great. We made it to one crag and I did one climb, I can’t recall the names but what I do remember is encountering a gull at two thirds height. I pulled my head over a narrow ledge to be face to face with a gull who promptly regurgitated (in three goes) all over me. I dropped back down on my arms and made a quick tricky traverse right into another line to continue up. The rope drag was horrendous and as I gulped for air all I seemed to take in was the hideous smell of decomposed fish and gut fluids. We didn’t do anything else as the weather turned, so with my buffalo wrapped in several layers of plastic bags we drove the three to four hours back. In many ways it was a fun trip, but I never got to Pembrokeshire. Johnny was more lucky and went one time with Gareth, they started with a ripper of a line and were looking forward to a great time in perfect conditions. As they walked back down for the second climb Johnny was eyeing up and waving to a couple of girls, he didn’t look where he was going and twisted his ankle. Gareth wasn’t too impressed, and it seems that I was not the only one to not have luck there:
Next we move onto the ‘Ugly’ and I’m not referring to Rob in the image below. He was one of my housemates when I was at uni in Coventry and on occasion I would catch up with him and Nick both of whom lived near Gloucester. In the image below I am belaying him up his first ever rock climb at Cleeve Hill called Hand Jam. His parents lived close to his place and the convenient 20m limestone crag provided some fun lines. On one occasion when a chance to climb with Gareth in North Wales came up I was in a quandary, it was the weekend of Rob and Emma’s wedding in Gloucester. I decided that I could do both so after climbing till mid-afternoon on the Saturday I drove the three and half hours (180km) to the wedding stayed till late and drove back. After a few hours’ sleep Gareth and I were back on the crag! I digress, back to the ‘Ugly’… the Avon Gorge. I’ve been here twice and climbed at the Amphitheatre and Suspension Bridge Buttress. Why ugly you may ask, well for me the highly polished soft grey limestone was not inviting, the sparse gear was not that great, the busy A4 road below in a trapped valley meant that the area smelled of car fumes and worse for me was that you were in full view of people being in the heart of a bustling tourist town. On one occasion with Dawn we climbed a few routes but it really didn’t appeal to either of us, then I went back with Gareth. On that occasion I forgot my harness, um no problem Gareth always has spare harnesses in his car. You may remember in North Wales he didn’t even know he had a spare car alarm key, his car was always a mess and I used to bag him out no end. As such it was just before this trip, and this trip only, that he decided to clean his car out and that meant no spare harness. So we made a harness up from slings and after playing on a few non-descript lines to make sure it felt comfortable and safe enough he lead the crag classic Hells Gate. Um it didn’t feel much like a classic to us and we bailed after the first pitch:
Now onto the ‘Good’. That is an understatement and I would rather say the ‘Magnificent’ Severn (well the river below it does flow to the Severn estuary!). I’ve climbed at a few places along the Wye Valley including Shorn Cliff and Symonds Yat, but it is Wintour’s Leap that is the one that is so amazing. The glory of the crag can only be seen from the river, as the road on the east bank provides no clue of what awaits due to the trees. You park up in small bays with only logs to tell you to stop the car, if you go too much further you would plummet about 100m. The sight is staggering and this place offers superb limestone, outrageous overhangs, technical faces, cracks, flakes. The tranquil nature of this crag just adds oodles of appeal, the tall trees and graceful river provide a great backdrop. Before I start mentioning climbing, the name of this place beckons to be talked about. It was named after a royalist by the name of Sir John Wintour who in the mid 1600’s was being pursued by parliamentary forces while on horseback. Legend has it he leapt off this mighty cliff and both he and horse landed safely in the Wye River; then swimming to the nearby Chepstow Castle. There is some truth in the story but he didn’t leap from here instead he escape from the Roundheads by crossing the river, without the leap, at less spectacular locations of Lancaut and Sedbury:
Below is an unknown climber (as a guide would say) on Let Us Pray a fantastic route stretching some 60m up the black limestone. These clean walls provide bold climbing with good gear when it is most needed and we did a good number of quality lines here. Some routes would look like vegetated choss piles but even these surprisingly kept to solid rock and provided great outings. On one occasion Kate suggested the climb called The Men in Black would be a good one to try. Well the film was damned good so why wouldn’t the climb be! The guide did warn that start was somewhat run out, but I was keen. I started up the groove that went for some 10m, and at the top I was to make a step left onto a rib. Only problem being that there was not much gear and a ground fall awaited, so I was somewhat nervous about it and pumped out while plucking up the courage to make the move. I finally went for it and with relief got some good gear in before the next groove, which proved to be the crux and pretty technical. I had a bash a few times but couldn’t work out the move, or was it that my arms were pumped out. So I did what I had never done before and asked Kate to ‘take rope’, to which she replied ‘what!?’. It was the first time that I had not either down climbed a route or taken a lead fall, and she was more surprised than me. As it was, after a quick recovered and I ate up the rest of the line and she had been right it was brilliant. Back then it was given E1 and some guys on an adjacent route said he felt it was more like E2, now the online guide tells me it is E3. Probably fair considering the runout nature:
During another trip here we were finishing up for the day and I had led the penultimate pitch to a big leaning tree that provided the perfect sling belay. I watched the light fade as the final pitch was led above me. When it was my turn to follow we had a problem, the lock carabiner had fully locked and try as I might I couldn’t get it to budge. I tried tensioning the system and knocking the gate but to no avail and the light was fading. The tree was big with a solid trunk towering over 10m above me so I couldn’t pop the sling over it. There was only one thing for it to snap the sling. This was at a time before I carried a knife on multi-pitches, something I started soon after but have since stopped doing again. So I tensioned the system with the sling over a rock edge and used a rock to smash it. It took what felt like eternity to get through the dyno sling, a good 20min of smashing with tiring arms. Since this occurred I have always had a very healthy respect for the strength of those slings, and that one was quite old. Back at the car we got some pliers and discovered that a grain of rock has got in the sleeve of the screw gate, with the pliers we could hear the grain grind and break up. The image below is, I forget who now on, Tigers Don’t Cry at Shorn Cliff, that cliff provides great routes but they are shorter single pitch lines so we spent most time heading to Wintour’s Leap:
Soon I’ll introduce you to Kashi, a friend from Bavaria. He came over once and stayed at a mates house in Bristol. His mate was a local hard sports climber and knew all the hidden/secret sports crags and the idea of visiting them appealed to Kashi. So instead of heading to one of the great tall trad cliffs we bush bashed to what felt like poor second cousin crags, while the routes were impressive to see they were way too hard for either of us to contemplate. It seemed a sad waste to me, as it was the only chance I had to climb with Kashi in the UK. On the main cliff of Wintour’s Leap the top out came up right into several back gardens. The people who lived here were pretty cool and they had separated out a pathway from their property to allow the climbers to top out and walk out back to the road. The separating fence line included dense plantings to provide them with privacy and small signs asking people to be respectful and not be too noisy. It’s one of the quirky things that I really liked about this place, and made we want to come back. There were no walk paths by which you could get to the base of the crag so we had to rap in. We would often take everything down to the base and then at the end of the day have to haul it all back up. I guess there was a level of security about leaving things at the base rather than in carpark just off a fairly well used road. This did however mean that on the last climb we would either haul or carry it all back up. Unafraid of being a pack horse I would pack everything into the biggest bag and offer to follow up on the last line, below on one such occasion I’m following up Zelda after another great day in this little hidden gem that never seemed to get too much attention:
Next time I’ll take you to the south west corner of the UK where there is an amazing array of geological formations, and more great climbing including two in particular that rate very high on my favourite climbs.
Sandbagged 