Way back in ancient history,man had been drawn to this wall, etching in the flying figure of a swan. Anonymous time passed before man was again drawn into its mesmerising call and the flying figures went from a premonition to reality.
It’s 1986. Across the Peak climbers are propping up the bar doing bicep curls with their pints. In the Lazy Trout pub, a mile southwest of the Roaches, Falco is pumping “Rock Me Amadeus” out of the jukebox as snow begins to drift up against the walls and cover the road linking Meerbrook to civilisation.
The sky turns purple-grey and the cormorants on Tittesworth ruffle feathers and tuck beaks to black breasts. Local man Septimus decides that he should make a break for home before it gets too heavy and besides, his tea is waiting for him at home. He grabs his hat and strides out into the cold to the jeers from people at the bar; heckling him for making them endure a brief bitter blast from outside. He glances up to the craggy horizon and through the whirling static of snowflakes he thinks he spies a car parked up at the Roaches. “Eet cayn’t bay,” he mumbles in a potteries drawl. He drags his feet through the snow back to his front door as the blizzard closes in and wipes the horizon from view.
Up on the hillside a rock master is doing battle with the Lower Tier’s miniscule holds when all about him is an apparition of whirling cotton wool. The route’s holds all recline so unhelpfully that no snow would stick to them, their friction lingers on. The gothic bastion of Rock Hall propels wispy vortices of pine smoke into the atmosphere, only to be snatched away by the wind. These wisps pass this stick man as he rocks up, pressing down with three tips on a crystalline crescent crimp out of sight down and right. The left latches the mini-hold below the last hard move, one foot is smearing insanely, the other poised in space, its sole catching a flake of snow. His body tightens, each anchor at its absolute limit, friction being at its maximum before it gives. He relaxes again, at a point of perfect poise, his unwound body ready to stretch. Bringing the right hand up and over, the sloping ledge is grasped, the barn door is punted shut and the left hand comes up to match. Feet are skiffled across and the Secrets of Dance are swarmed up to the summit. The sky turns a deeper grey and the ancient walls are left to gather their snowy blanket in peace.
When the snow melted, the Lower Tier’s most technical masterpiece remained; no one would follow his tracks up this bare wall for another fifteen years. It was against the grain for the time, that’s for sure. Climbers back then generally spent the winter months doing a few pull-ups and drinking beer - or if they were real athletes they went caving. But things were evolving, a new breed of climber was emerging - a dedicated and scientific breed which would change the course of climbing history.
In the same year, the wall to the right was breached by tip-toeing along the wall’s lop-sided smirk using, “a series of frustrating pulls on pebbles which usually result in air-borne retreat”. Thing on a Spring was born. But the frustrating pulls on pebbles were actually a single pebble pull and when that pebble pulled, the wall remained impregnable. The two routes sat together, the beautifully technical and sustained Against the Grain and its bigger, uglier brother Thing on a Spring, with its massive moves above an empty expanse. Neither route ever aging, just slowly returning to some semblance of neutrality.
As time passed the rumours grew that neither could ever be climbed again - too much had departed from the rock for a route to exist now. Locals still talked of their folklore, of that stick man, Simon Nadin repeating Thing on a Spring without recourse to its customary side runner in The Swan, or of him heaving himself back from the point of over balance with just one finger on just one pebble during a photo shoot. But the reality remained, and John Read’s internet Grit List said it all - unclimbable at present.
York was a reasonable place to grow up as a climber. Especially when my Dad chipped crimps into the dead Dutch elm stump at the bottom of our garden, and screwed two blocks of wood above the back doorframe for chin-ups. Even better, Almscliff was only forty minutes away and three times a week I’d follow the familiar trail through Tadcaster and Boston Spa and up to the cliff. Every early grade boundary I pushed through was forged there; Low Man Easy Way, Birds Nest Crack, Zig Zag Direct, Great Western, Dolphinian, Black Wall Eliminate and Western Front. The evening before my A-level Geography exam was spent ticking The Big Greeny. A fortnight later I fell off Pebble Wall and broke my leg. To top it all, I didn’t get the grades I’d anticipated and my meal ticket to Sheffield University vanished in a puff of smoke. However Stoke-on-Trent was still willing to take a chance with me - I set off west.
Arriving in darkest Staffordshire in 1999 I found a whole new region to explore. And unhindered from the pressures of the funkier Sheffield scene I could develop at my own pace. An unsullied start in a new county, and I was ready for action. I’d heard of The Sloth, Elegy and Valkyrie of course, who hasn’t? But one route fascinated me beyond all others - Thing on a Spring - with its hefty price tag of E6 7a. And if it was English 7a before the crystal parted company, what could it be now - it didn’t bear thinking about.
Undeterred and game for a laugh, I tied on to the familiar safety of a top rope one day with local legend Gary Cooper and dared to try the moves. After shovelling up the lower crack system, a single stem is climbed until it peters out. Stepping right, a six-inch wide ledge curves off to a point and this is edged along like a Manhattan skyscraper suicide attempter. The end of the ramp is a lonely place; a bald wall with low and useless handholds that simply hold you in place and sloping footholds. At wits end, I tried the only recourse left, a pop for the top. Incredibly it went. It was a big jump, but well, I’d never liked pebble pulling anyway.
Weeks passed, waiting for a truly frictional day. And even though it was the middle of June, my prayers were somehow answered. Now back, but at the sharp end, I took several gut-wrenching falls going for that pop; I could actually feel my hair blowing upward with the speed of each whipper. The falls felt violent, I’d borrowed a harness that was too big and each fall snatched my body around, straining my back. And having two belayers meant I’d come tight on each rope individually dragging me one way then the next like the baby before King Solomon. Battered, bruised, and with bleeding tips, I tried for one final time.
I uncoil once again and the top is held. I heard Justin make a very weird screeching noise in celebration and I came flooding back into the real world, my out of reach ambitions achieved - a 7a on a route. I started to panic a little that I might fluff it on the easy romp to the top, a section I’d normally solo happily but Justin reassured me, “if you fall off now you’ve still ticked it,” he giggled from his filming perch on top of Raven Rock. The day was the route’s 15th anniversary - which has no gem stones attached to it. A little like the route. A coincidence – I think not.
Simon Nadin is a legend. Once commonly described as the “one you’re unlikely to have heard of,” although this can’t really be the case any more – his secret is out. He’s mostly remembered for being a modest, lanky, beer-drinking climbing world champion. Someone to aspire to. It is true what they say, that by repeating his routes you tend to get a measure of the man. An absolute all-rounder; technical, bold, powerful, delicate, it didn’t matter and all light years ahead of their time. All his routes represent new levels, a breakthrough in boldness and technicality which still command a great deal of respect today and all from a man who we could see in ourselves. A dude who would drink beer and play down his ascents with a modesty seldom encountered in today’s sponsor fuelled arena, where bullsh*t and headline grabbing seem to be the new order of the day.
I’m also a little aggrieved to tell the truth - he left so little to be done. All the lines taken and only a few gems remaining, top roped or led with side runners for us to pluck in the future, but you know they’re not going to be easy. Whilst the fraternity were listening in on louder routes erupting from the Sheffield scene, Simon just steadily plucked away on local routes and occasionally crossed the threshold to see what was happening on the other side. His on-sight solos of Kellogg and Menopause at Stoney Middleton certainly muted his doubters; they were all there, witnesses, with their very own eyes.
I was out with John Perry and Simon Nadin a month or so later. I was quiet, Simon was a hero of mine and I said very little to him, in case I came out with something stupid, as I usually did. As a kid, growing up in climbing, I was awe-inspired by the rock climbing elite who I’d see at the crag. I’d aspire to climb routes they’d done, the pictures I’d seen in magazines gave a reason in itself to climb. John raised the point to Simon that I’d repeated Thing on a Spring and that I’d jumped through the crux, missing out the mislaid pebble to re-climb his route after all these years. Simon gave a glib smile and simply said, “well he’s not done it then”. There’s just no pleasing some people.
Thing on a Spring may have been alive once more, but it took until December 8th 2001 for its older brother, Against the Grain to be resuscitated, its second ascent deservedly falling to the technical skills of Justin Critchlow, his wiry frame and horizontal attitude going a long way to get him up the increasingly blank rock. His antics were well-documented urban myths in Staffordshire: like the time he broke his arm at Baldstones and simply waved it around saying, “it’s a good break that one,” or the time he soloed The Sloth with a paper bag over his head. One of the last times he soloed The Sloth, Justin went to the lip, but then decided to reverse the route. A few moments later another climber was leading at the lip, the flake broke and the leader crashed into the Great Slab – it should have been Justin. Someone was watching over him that day.
Not long afterwards Justin quit climbing for several years, coming back in time for the new millennium. Brought up in the climbing sense by the likes of John Perry, Paul Higginson and Julian Lines his pedigree is second to none and his feet seem to smear on nothings. His method of ascending the problematic wall was simple ballet. I was upset inside though, it had developed into a race for the second ascent, not a good thing between friends, and he’d finished first. I’d won the toss, had three goes and lowered off. Justin had three goes then did it on his fourth - magic.
A year would pass before I got back on that wall, I couldn’t face it. But sure enough on a lonely, foggy and damp day, I experienced the greatest friction I’ve ever known and the third ascent was mine. This was a real weight off my shoulders, the route had taken a lot of time and energy, and it was overdue for mopping up. The ascent was catharsis and I felt I could progress on to something fresh and new; I bouldered almost exclusively for the rest of the year.
The years ticked on and the walls remained quiet, the arena of dreams was reclaimed by the Valkyries and the nesting birds. A singular blip occurred when a very on form Mark Sharratt sneaked up from Leek for his turn at ascending Thing on a Spring. He said afterwards that he would have exchanged all his hard extremes for that one route - a bold statement reflecting the importance of the moment to him. On his ascent I belayed, and it felt great to be watching something that was so ingrained in my brain. He made it look a breeze, although he did complain of pain in his arm for weeks afterwards from when he swung into the rock on the now customary fall. The route was not only living again, it was growing up, quietly.
But the peace was rudely broken in October 2005. It was the first day of the grit season, and the circus had arrived. It was one of those days when you walk up to the crag and rub your head, feeling a migraine coming on - you’re not gonna get any peace today. The east had descended on our western civilisation. I’d been in the Churnet that morning with friends and strode up to the Roaches from somewhere far from our parking spots. We were a little disgruntled by having to walk from beyond the tea room but there was a spring in our stride, we’d climbed E7 that morning and could spend the remainder of the day shooting the breeze and generally swaggering around - our favourite pastime.
The majority of the invading hordes were on the Upper Tier finding contrived problems to do in their sticky trainers or doing laps on the Loculus roof. Fred Crook, long term resident and guardian of local ethical practices, was none too impressed by this. But meanwhile down on the Lower Tier the new Human Fly and his compadre were getting in a muddle on gritstone’s biggest wall. They started with Secrets of Dance, but by foot traversing the ledge made it more of an E2 than the necky E4 that it was supposed to be. So they came and asked me what this was all about. I had a feeling where this was going, Leo Houlding bringing his big wall experience to the biggest wall.
A while passed and finally we were talking beta, he was going to get on Against the Grain. A few tentative goes later and he was at the sloping rail, yet his body was too straight and it swivelled out away from the rock. Baby bouncer time. But it was straight back on for the Fly and he was up, poetry in motion. The fourth ascent and the first improvement on style, his ascents requiring nothing more than a little recce and a brush from adjacent routes without recourse to abseiling or pre-practice.
Jesus. The Lower Tier’s big wall has been breached; its routes pocketed in a day by Leo Houlding. The talented Sheffield climber Pat King was bursting for a go. He tied on but the doors were closed, the Thing on a Spring wasn’t ready for trade route status just yet, he wasn’t even allowed a glimpse of the crux.
With his gear still in the bow shaped cracks, the attention turned to big brother and again after a measly four attempts he was legging it up the final cracks to the top. Jesus. The Lower Tier’s big wall has been breached; its routes pocketed in a day by Leo Houlding. The talented Sheffield climber Pat King was bursting for a go. He tied on but the doors were closed, the Thing on a Spring wasn’t ready for trade route status just yet, he wasn’t even allowed a glimpse of the crux. Perhaps one day he, or someone else will return for the first fall-free ascent.
And so the story draws to a close. I still always pause to stare at this wall when I walk past and transport myself onto it, proud of my part in its history. The emotions flood back and keep me inspired, keep me climbing, keep me searching. The lichen may be growing over the holds once more, but the moves are still fresh in my mind, burned into my psyche like a favourite theme. The wall is now familiar, fashioned by a legend, matured into a myth, befriended by its local boys and finally coaxed back into reality. I don’t imagine any routes will hold the same importance to me, they certainly haven’t since. But at least I can keep seeking and returning to here - to sit beneath the Greatest Wall on Grit. n
Andi Turner is 25 ¾ and a BMC member. He lives in Leek in Staffordshire and was heavily involved with the latest BMC Roaches guide. He teaches at a local high school and is still finding inspiration in climbing in the Staffordshire region after seven years.
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