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.