This week, as a tribute to veteran South West climber, Mike Banks who died recently, the republication of his 1995 High article-Connections- which looks at the historical links connecting the early days of South-west exploration to the modern era.
The
figure silhouetted against the skyline on the Bosigran cliff top was
clearly that of an elderly man, his white hair blowing in the wind.
The year was 1947 and I was being trained to become a Commando cliff
climbing instructor. The Cornish coastline was a very empty place in
those days; strangers were noticed. I was told that he was Arthur
Westlake Andrews, who lived a few miles away. He was, I gathered, the
founding father of Cornish climbing.
Not
long afterwards I joined the Climbers' Club and realised that Andrews
was the custodian of the Count House, the Club hut at Bosigran. He
was a friendly and hospitable man, always interested in what was
developing in Cornish climbing. Despite the disparity of our years —
I was 25, he was 80 — we got to know one another. I would be
invited to his house at Tregerthen, next door to Eagle's Nest above
Zennor, where he would show me faded photographs taken in the Alps
in the previous century. Together with his sister, Elsie, we would
hold grave discussions on the etiquette of the Cornish cream tea. He
held strongly to the view that the jam should be put on first, then
the cream on top.
Andrews
was the quintessential English gentleman mountaineer, educated at
Charterhouse and Oxford where, of course, he read classics. A notable
all-round sportsman, he attained national standard in athletics,
winning the mile in Berlin. In tennis he got as far as the
semi-finals of the Men's Singles at Wimbledon.
At
Magdelan his rooms were above those of Coolidge, the eminent if
fractious Alpine mountaineer some 20 years his senior. Through him
Andrews became acquainted with mountaineering and from 1890 was
active in both the Alps and the British hills. With Archer Thomson he
was to produce a guide to Lliwedd.... the first Welsh guidebook.
It
so happened that Andrews spent his holidays in Cornwall staying with
his uncle who lived at Zennor. Having taken up mountaineering he
naturally examined the coastline with a climber's eye. In those early
days the Alps were all the fashion. The British hills were widely
regarded as a convenient form of Alpine training. Mere outcrops were
dismissed as 'scrambles'. It
is interesting that Andrews and Tom Longstaff, both West Country
pioneers, initially opted for long coastal traverses. I suppose that
the ascent of a cliff appeared to them ridiculously short whereas a
long coastal traverse might offer a rock climb of near Alpine length.
Indeed, Andrews harboured the ambition, never to be realized, of
traversing the whole coastline of Britain. He also developed the
practice of climbing in gym shoes for which
he deserves great credit. It enabled climbers to make far harder
friction moves than was possible in nails. Remember
that Vibram soles did not appear until after World War 2.
Even so,
vertical routes were not neglected and Andrews made the first climb
on nearby Bosigran in 1902, the Ledge Route. Cornish climbing, as we
recognise it today, was born .Andrews
went to live at Tregerthen in 1922 and continued to climb actively.
Through him the Climbers' Club acquired the Count House at Bosigran
in 1938 and he became the first custodian, always showing great
warmth and interest towards visiting climbers. The hut gave a
stimulus to West Country climbing and focused it firmly on West
Penwith, perhaps retarding the development of other worthy West
Country areas.
Zeke Deacon leading Monolith Slab: Rosmergy
I
move on now to 1957 when I was in charge of the Commando climbers and
often teamed up with the redoubtable Zeke Deacon on the lookout for
new routes. On one occasion we were virtually provoked into a new
route by Andrews. In 1923 he had traversed into the Great Zawn of
Bosigran and had written that, if the ledges on which he had seen
cormorants perching could be connected, then a notable route might be
created. He urged us to try it. The
Green Cormorant Face route resulted. It should be remembered that we
were in the pre-nut era but thankfully, rock boots had been
invented. Artificial climbing was the flavour of the month. Zeke, who
of course led,
used several pitons with etriers on the first pitch. Even so, I found
it at the limit of my ability. In any case, the second's job was no
doddle. His task is to get the pitons out and doing this swaying on a
wobbly ladder, walloping a peg at ankle level was both acrobatic and
exhausting.
We
duly reported back to Andrews and received his congratulations with
an accompanying cream tea. Now Andrews was also a poet and a few days
later a poem arrived in the post in which he parodied Flecker's
famous lines on the pilgrims setting off on the Goldern Road to
Samarkand. He was making a wistful, but not judgmental, comment on
'progress' in climbing technique; a lament at the loss of innocence
perhaps. Looking back to his early Cornish years he asks:
Who
are these beggars in their ragged clothes
And old felt hats and
roughly mended hose
Who
wear old pairs of worn out rubber shoes?
He gives the answer:
We
are the pilgrims of a bygone age
Who
traverse on the shore from stage to stage
In
lust of seeking what no man has seen
Between
Bosigran Head and far Pendeen.
But
what of these Commando climbers?
Laden
like Tartarin with all the gear
For
storming citadels that climbers wear
Pitons
and karabiners, ropes and slings,
And
everything except pair of wings.
They
reply:
We
are professionals and this crusade
Is
but the usual practice of our trade.
It
is interesting that the use of pitons, which had inflamed British
climbers when used by Germans on the Munich Climb on Tryfan in 1936,
were approved by the climbing establishment in the 1950s. Might there
be something prophetic in this if applied to the bolt controversy and
might not Andrews's tolerant reaction have a message for today? Andrews
died, ripe in years, in 1960 to be succeeded as custodian of Bosigran
by another quite splendid old gentleman, Rear Admiral Keith Lawder.
Keith had retired from the Navy at the age of 55 and taken to
climbing with infectious enthusiasm. He was the most amiable of men,
always ready for a joke or a prank. In fact the Admiral had never
ceased being a Midshipman.
Rear Admiral Keith Lawder
I
remember a naval club meet based at Bosigran. Keith, looking
outrageously scruffy, was at the sink washing up. A young able seaman
came up to him and said: "Wotcher Chief, what's this buzz about
some bloody admiral coming on this meet?" With his
conspiratorial grin Keith replied: "Don't worry. I hear he's not
a bad old stick."
When
he was well into his '60s, Keith set about exploring Lundy with Ted
Pyatt. His memorial as a climber must surely be his first ascent, at
the age of 68, of the incomparable Devil's Slide (Severe). It is
arguably the finest slab climb in Britain. Whatever his or her
talent, it is a route that any visitor to Lundy, who has an eye and a
heart, must feel impelled to climb.
One
of the most joyous climbs I have ever done was to repeat The Devil's
Slide with Keith Lawder, then in his 79th year. The third on the rope
was his grandson, Iain Peters who, instead of playing childrens'
games, had since his early youth, been taken out on climbing
adventures by his adored grandfather.
I
have climbed with Iain, mostly in the West Country, from his boyhood
until he blossomed as a climber. He is the author of the current
guide to North Devon and Cornwall and the architect of many first
ascents in this area.
So,
from my youthful acquaintance with Arthur Westlake Andrews to my
avuncular climbs with lain Peters, I seem to have spanned West
Country climbing from its inception to the present day. It is a
kaleidoscope vision. The '50s and '60s were rich decades. Three
Commando instructors were pre-eminent: Zeke Deacon, Vivian Stevenson
and 'Mac' McDermott. They climbed in the friendliest of rivalry with
Peter and Barrie Biven and Trevor Peck. The guidebooks are witness to
the rich harvest of their routes. The Commandos tended to fade out
from the '70s onwards when their role changed from cliff raiding to
Mountain and Arctic Warfare and they were less in evidence.
Of
course there has been no let-up in the development of the area.
Improved equipment, techniques and training methods have pushed up
standards. New routes have proliferated in the West Country as
elsewhere.
I
suspect that all climbers of mature years have one range of hills, or
a particular crag, to which they instinctively return for
solace. Unhesitatingly I head for West Penwith. It has given, and
continues to give me, so much. It is, of course, greatly changed from
those far off days just after the war when the Bosigran face and
Chair Ladder were crying out for detailed exploration and Carn Barra
was virgin ground.
The
dreamlike quality of the far west is vanishing. The old friendships
have given place to the acrimony that bolts seem to bestow and the
environment is under siege, eroded by climbers' feet and scoured
by the gardening of routes. Long ago I remember the raven's nest on
Bosigran that gave the route, Raven's Wall, its name. It is long
gone; no longer do buzzards soar over the Great Zawn. I must leave
the last word with Andrews who, decades before the environment became
an issue, wrote:
Will
there be ravens on Bosigran still and has the buzzard got his usual
nest in the Great Zawn, or will they too have passed, To
other hunting grounds with all the rest?
Mike Banks 1995 ( First published in HIGH 153 August 1995)
