When I left you last week, I was just getting home from my adventures on the water – and when I say “home”, I mean back to my tent near Corfe Castle. So this is what else I got up to.
First, I snoozed a bit and then stuffed my face with Pringles and chocolate cake bars. Breakfast was a long time ago and we’d had a busy night and morning and frankly, I didn’t have any proper breakfast food in. My original plan had been to take the steam train from Norden, across the road, to Swanage and then walk back along the ridge, a walk of some 12km. It was a really hot day on Friday and I realised that walking that distance in that heat probably wasn’t the greatest idea I’d ever had. By the time I’d got home having had no sleep, I realised it was a really bad idea. So instead I walked across the campsite (this takes at least ten minutes in itself) and over the road and down to Norden, got on the steam train and chuffed my way to Swanage as planned. But instead of doing anything particularly adventurous, I walked to the pier and had lunch. I know from previous experience that they do great cheese toasties, if you can keep the seagulls away, and although there’s a fee to walk on the pier, they waive that if you’re just going to the cafe.
After lunch I walked along the beach, into my favourite chocolate shop and back to the beach. I think by now I was mostly just killing time. I had an ice cream (peach & pineapple; new flavour as per Big Kid Summer) and sat on the wall to eat it, overlooking the sea. Why didn’t I paddle? Why didn’t I sketch or read or write? Well, partly because we were finalising arrangements for the county day the next day and I was waiting to phone the other leader who’d be there. By the time she called, I think I was about ready to go back. It had been a long night.
The steam train had broken down so we returned by heritage diesel instead and literally as I stepped off the train, the rain started. I put on my rain jacket and by the time I’d left the station area, I’d realised I needed the matching trousers. I don’t think I’ve ever been out in rain quite that heavy. I jumped in a puddle on my way back into the campsite (#BigKidSummer again) and fled to my tent. I stayed in the tent all evening. The rain just poured down. I had to go out a couple of times to add extra guylines or pull the existing ones a bit tighter but I spent the entire evening sitting in the tent, trying to read while also being deeply annoyed by the weather.
Let’s cut to the next adventure. County had arranged a series of watersports activities for Brownies, Guides and Rangers. Rangers were due to be coasteering and climbing but the weather wasn’t good enough for coasteering and we’d had a last-minute change of plan to kayaking instead. There was one free leader space and two leaders who wanted to join in, hence the phone call in Swanage. I’d been a bit divided over whether I wanted to do coasteering (terrifying which is why I should do it) or climbing (I’ve never climbed on a real cliff but it’s something I can probably do) but now the decision was made for me. I kayak all the time. We met in a car park in the back streets of Swanage where the Rangers were dressed up in wetsuits & buoyancy aids and then we walked together to the beach where they were put in double sit-on-top kayaks and I settled down on the beach with the piles of consent forms and the other leader’s handbag. I took photos as best I could from a distance, read a little, edited a little and waited for them to return.
We walked back to the car park, got changed, had lunch and then piled into a minibus to be taken to Dancing Ledge for climbing – or rather, to be taken to Spyway Car Park. It’s 1.6km to the ledge from there but the last little bit is hellishly steep. I knew I’d struggle on the way back up, and I did. Oh, I did!
Dancing Ledge is a bit of cliff set back from the sea where there’s a lowish ledge sticking out into the water. There used to be a private boys’ school at Langton Matravers and the headteacher blasted a shallow rectangle into the rock which fills with seawater and makes a semi-safe semi-wild swimming pool. If you’ve ever read the Malory Towers books, this pool is apparently the one theirs is based on. The water was indeed wild. The pool was mostly under water as great waves crashed and splashed onto the ledge and as the tide came in, we had to adjust the route we used to climb back up onto solid land, although our climbing pitch was perfectly safe.
Yes, I got to climb! I had a harness and a helmet to carry down to the Ledge, ropes were shared out among the girls and while we put our harnesses on, one on the instructors rigged a couple of climbing pitches and then took half the group down via a couple of awkward scrambles to get going. I was last of my group, acting mostly as unofficial photographer. Most of the girls made it look reasonably easy once you’d got past the awkward first step. It wasn’t very high. Twenty feet, maybe. Twenty-five. When someone got as high as pretty much anyone can get, you could still probably touch her feet if you jumped.
Meanwhile, they’d rigged an abseiling pitch next to us and the other half of the group was making its way down, taking shelter from a scorching sun in a crack in the cliff.
At last it was my turn. I had proper climbing shoes, legacy of various attempts to be a hobbyist climber. I’ve bouldered a little. I’ve climbed a little. But my thing, when I was a student, was caving. Now, Canterbury is about as far from UK caves as it’s possible to get so what little practice we could get between trips to the Mendips and South Wales was on climbing walls. Regardless of the fact that what we were training for was climbing in the dark in wellies, some of us invested in climbing shoes. Between the climbing and the caving, you’d expect me to be pretty comfortable on a cliff – and I wasn’t uncomfortable but it’s like nothing I’ve ever done before. I’m sure you can imagine the difference between a sheer rock wall and an artificial climbing wall – rough board set with shaped, coloured holds forming planned and graded routes.
But if anything, a cave is even more different. Caves are 3D. It’s virtually unknown that you’d climb a bare wall. There would almost always be something else nearby to brace on. You’d wedge yourself in a corner or between two walls or push your back against something. If a cave is truly sheer and vertical, you’d call it a pitch and either drop a ladder down it or rig an SRT rope so you’d just slide down the rope without really touching the sides. I’m still inclined to claim that there’s a certain amount of elegance or style in proper climbing. In caving, you do what you need to. I’ve used my own head to brace myself while climbing in a cave. Brute force and fighting ugly are your everyday techniques for climbing underground.
Of course, I haven’t caved regularly since 2007 but muscle memory remains. Climbing using nothing but hands and feet isn’t natural for me. Climbing exclusively facing the rock isn’t natural. Having a harness and rope isn’t natural. Wearing dainty pointy-toed shoes isn’t natural. Being able to see what I’m doing isn’t natural, come to that. And of course, it’s now been sixteen years. I have The Fear. Oh, I got up as high as most of the others. I couldn’t make it over the overhang and up to the karabiner but I think I didn’t disgrace myself.
After my turn, the abseiling instructor came and fetched my group. The abseiling group was already in place to start climbing but we had to return to the top. I volunteered to go first this time. Then I could keep taking the photos of both abseiling and climbing.
I’ve abseiled a few times. I hate the moment I have to step backwards off a tower but somehow a cliff was easier. Because it’s lower? Because my lizard brain gets rock? Because I trust this instructor more? Because I’m accustomed to being lowered on a rope via a battery belt? Or because I was distracted by recognising an Italian hitch and showing him I understood what was going on? Anyway, the abseil was pleasant except for the harness digging into my flesh. Not as much as a battery belt would.
I stayed down the bottom; took photos of climbers and abseilers, wondered how the grockles were going to get their picnic stuff back up the cliff, sweltered under an unrelenting sun etc. When it came time to go back up, the abseiling instructor rigged a rope up a clattery formation he described as stairs. I had to wait for the entire group to go up – didn’t have to, I suppose, but would you leave the teenagers in your care on the ledge while you got back up as quickly as possible? Anyway, they made it look pretty easy so I didn’t bother putting on my climbing shoes when my turn came. They’re uncomfortable so I had my sandals for prancing around taking photos. Well, for all I’m accustomed to climbing in ungainly footwear, the sandals were a mistake. I couldn’t get my feet in the right place because the soles caught on things and bent back instead of going with my foot and I found myself, thirty seconds in, wedged in a crack, unable to either climb up or fall down, biting my tongue to not yell unsuitable words to the instructor in the presence of Rangers. I had to be rescued by one of the many inevitable climbers down on Dancing Ledge who wedged my feet and shoved me upwards. Somehow the girls missed this little performance.
We’ll skim over the hellish climb back up the cliff. The two leaders were delivered back to our cars in the car park in Swanage but the girls were collected from Spyway, as per the original plan. Swanage – and indeed most of Purbeck – turned out to be a bad place to find a cheese toasties afterwards, at 5.30pm on a Sunday. I had cheese back at the campsite but nothing to eat with it and I eventually resorted to a pub in Sandford.
My tent, inside which it had been raining in the morning, had dried out. By the time I got home, I think I didn’t do much. A hot shower and clothes I hadn’t sweated quite so profusely in. A little reading. A welcome bed. A third night outdoors and home by 10am.
(I had a bath when I got home, went to see the new Mission Impossible (I love Mission Impossible!!) and then ran to meet my Rangers again to celebrate the end of term at the waterpark.)