I was up at the Wainstones at the weekend (and glorious it was too) doing a bit of finally checking for my new Northern England guide, due out in January. Ambling back down the hill at the end of the day my mind rolled back down the years, to my first visit to the North York Moors. Back in 1966 I persuaded my long suffering father to take three of us (all mid-teenages and mad keen for it!) over to Scugdale so we could bivi there for a couple of nights and do lots (and lots) of climbing.
We humped our gear up to the crag (mostly consisting of tinned food) and set up home in a small cave. After an afternoon cracking routes off the rain started, and continued all night - by mid-morning things had turned squalid, and eventually we had to admit defeat, I trekked to the farm to ask if I could use the phone (and got a bollocking for ‘camping’ at the crag) - and my father duly turned up and carted us off home.
It didn’t take long to dry out (though most of the tins had lost their labels) and by early evening the sun was out and it was glorious. From our house I could see the distant hills bathed in sunshine - it all seemed so unfair!
It was a lesson learnt though - on a recent visit to Northumberland with Alan we drove through pouring rain heading for Callerhues, we were pretty close to sacking it when I retold this tale, we pressed on just a little further - and almost inevitably the sun came out and we spent a glorious day.
2 comments:
I dont think you took that picture when i seen you Chris! Very Blue Peter! Enjoyed reading about your Scugdale trip, did the same when i started climbing only a few years ago. Hope you got some better light for them crag photos.
No - it was taken quite a while later - a cracking weekend so we went back for a bit more checking/crag shots.
Chris
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