Memories Of Thirty Years Ago
Nick Halls
Part 1.
Ogwen and the barn.
Despite the fact that I was living in Coventry and working from London at the time, I joined the Merseyside Mountaineering Club in the early 1960s as the result of a chance encounter with people of my own age who came from Liverpool.
At the time, when I visited North Wales I stayed in the Ogwen Valley, at Jones's barn, Blaen-y-Nant. The barn is situated just off the old road that ran down the western side of the Nant Ffrancon valley below Rhaeadr Ogwen. The barn was not normally used for agricultural purposes but was in fairly good repair. As I recall there was no door but the roof was sound and the straw was dry. I was not sure whether Jones laid out the straw for the 'dossers' or whether it was just there. Anyway he came and collected a shilling a night, which would now be 5p, and after thirty years of inflation seems pretty good value. We moaned about it then, despite the fact that it was the cheapest barn in the valley. I once stayed in the barn below Tryfan at Gwern Gof Uchaf within which it was usual to share the company of cows. This was a smelly experience, exposed one to the risk of getting gear covered in shit and it cost more.
Farmer Jones and his wife.
Farmer Jones was a dour, prematurely aged, diminutive man with a rounded back and shoulders, who hardly ever spoke. One day I watched him sorting sheep by himself, he did this by selecting the various categories of sheep from one flock and lifting them by their fleece over a low paling into other pens. To this day I do not understand why he did it this way. I watched him lift more than fifty sheep over a metre high paling in under an hour. I was truly impressed with the dogged persistence of his labours, a sort of midget Welsh Stachanovite.
His wife was quite a large women, who usually wore a cotton print wrap round dress, a sack tied around her waist as an apron, a woven, woollen shawl and a head scarf. She looked and dressed like my aunts who worked as farmer's wives in Camarthen and Glamorgan. I always asked her for permission to use the barn when I arrived. She did not pass the time of day either but always asked if I needed eggs, potatoes or milk. I usually bought these off her, thereby avoiding having to carry anything heavy or perishable when I hitched up to North Wales along the A 5. Selling eggs and milk in this way seems to have been a tradition of farmer's wives throughout Wales. A story circulating in my family tells of my Auntie Mabel from Camarthen who accumulated, in an old, galvanised bucket with a hole in it which she kept under the bed, enough money in small coin to buy a Fordson Major tractor for cash. Just after the war the tractor was ordered, and when it was delivered one morning the money due was presented in a milk churn. It took all the rest of the day to count the money. The punchline of the story was that the taxman had never had a penny out of it.
I always spoke in the little Welsh I had learned from my Mother, and Mrs Jones seemed to regard me as a good tenant. On Bank Holidays when the old barn was crowded she would let me sleep in a better barn, that was used for milking, in a clean, hay filled stall. I had a valuable inn with her which ensured that I could almost always guarantee a dry doss for any companions.
The residents.
The old barn was usually occupied by a crowd of people at weekends, some of whom were regulars or semi permanent residents who lived in it during the week. The semi permanent residents and some of the regulars were pretty rough and unruly, and the weekend visitors occupied the barn more or less on sufferance. I suppose these people would be described as young, homeless unemployed today. It was often necessary to stand up for ones sleeping space and to defend ones property with braggadocio and displays of aggression. The aggressive displays helped to overawe any opposition and to establish a position somewhere near the top of the pecking order, but occasionally a bluff got called and violence ensued. Although I fared reasonably well a lout alone stood very little chance if things got particularly nasty so alliances had to be established and carefully fostered.
Meeting the team.
It was in these circumstances that I made the acquaintance of Bob Dukeson, George Homer, Glen Hirons, Nick Jones, Pete Smith and Graham Chislett, all of whom were a lot more street wise than myself. Bob and George were apprentices in the shipyards, Glen was an apprentice clock repairer, and Chiz was in the RAF and stationed at Valley. I am not sure what Nick was doing at the time and I think Pete was a civil engineering student. I was an apprentice land surveyor.
My working arrangements required that I work for two or three months anywhere in the county more or less without a break, after which I earned a week or so off. This gave me the opportunity of building up my climbing standard and gave me an established position as a regular, semi permanent resident of Jones' barn, together with Chiz who came up every weekend from Anglesey. Bob, George, Nick, Pete and Glen, and occasionally other climbers from Liverpool, such as Bernie Hendrikson would use the barn at weekends.
As I recall, I first met Bob, George, Nick, Pete and Glen up at Merve's, a green hut beside the road, above the falls, where it was possible to get a bacon roll and mug of tea. It was the custom of those who dossed about the valley under boulders, in barns and in tents to congregate at Merve's to get breakfast before dispersing to go climbing. It was also the place to congregate after doing a route to bullshit about the day's exploits in front of anybody who could be impressed. The memory that remains is of Bob, George and Glen's entertaining Liverpool humour as they sloped about like scruffy Beatles clones. Nick and Pete were quieter but their humour was drier and Nick never had the figure for a Beatles clone. Chiz used to arrive at Merve's on Saturday mornings on a motor bike which he referred to as a "Goldie", which I think was a BSA Gold Star. Chiz was from south Wales, the son of the Chief Constable of Swansea, and was equally amusing and outrageous. He walked with an exaggerated swagger and always claimed to be an RAF officer whenever there was an influx of territorial army "pongs" into the barn. Actually he was unpromoted aircraft ground crew. He had a good singing voice and his particular party piece was singing operatic arias in Italian in the barn.
Life in Ogwen.
We got to know the Ogwen Valley fairly well, and eventually climbed most of the what would now be thought of as easy routes but in those days were quite respectable. I suppose we climbed at about HVS standard, with an occasional extreme, not much better or worse than I climb to today. However, the routes were climbed in boots, or "klets", and often in the rain. Being out in the rain, climbing wet greasy routes, in some vegetated dank location now dominates my memories of the climbing.
There was a social hierarchy among the Ogwen valley climbers, based on inverted snobbery. Those who used the worst accommodation, barns and boulders, were obviously hardier than the "pansies" who stayed in Idwal Youth Hostel or Club huts.
We new little about climbing clubs, organised meets or even the traditions of mountaineering. We had heroes however. We new of the exploits of Joe Brown and Don Whillans and also the names of Menlove Edwards and Colin Kirkus. We wanted to be as good at rock climbing as Brown and Whillans and to repeat the routes of Kirkus and Edwards. I am not sure how we learned about these people, presumably we slowly acquired an understanding of the history, culture and ethics of mountaineering by some sort of intellectual osmosis, possibly from stories we heard, as in those days there was no climbing press. If there was I never read it, a habit. I still retain.I suppose we could have been described as unattached, mountaineering yobs. Fortunately antecedent experience of this sort has a certain "cachet" among mountaineers and so is no particular dishonour.
Our technical knowledge of rope work, belaying and protecting ourselves with runners was rudimentary. I do not now remember how I found out about the basics of ropework, possibly from a book. Probably "Let's Go Climbing" by Colin Kirkus, which I still have on my shelf. It must have been a good book because I do more or less the same to day, except the kit is more garishly coloured and I have hundreds of pounds worth of technical gear hung about me which I do not know how to use properly. I do not remember ever using a map or compass, although I used them all the time at work, but we were quite confident finding our way about in bad visibility and at night. This is somewhat surprising as I now spend my time trying to persuade young hill walkers and mountaineers that the ability to read a map and navigate in bad weather is absolutely essential. A classic example of telling people to do something that I never did myself.
Festering in the barn.
A significant part of our time was spent "festering". The company of amusing people who could pass the boring hours of sitting around in bad weather with good humour was important. In those days festering could be pretty uncomfortable. We had no transport to get to the pub, we were often wet through and only a few of us had sleeping bags. The more fortunate of us "dossed" in old kapok, bomber air crew flying-suits cut in half at the waist, using the top as a sort of Duvet jacket and the legs as a double pied d'elephant. This had the great advantage that you could get up and go for a piss without getting out of your "pit". The less fortunate slept in their clothes under ex-army great coats or blankets. Drying out in the straw to avoid getting the kapok or blanket wet was as uncomfortable as any bivouac I have had in recent years. It was everybodys' ambition to possess a "Blacks Icelandic", the best sleeping bag of the day. This summer I was working in the Chamonix area with a geologist from Prague, who is studying the micro geomorphology of the Mont Blanc granite. The sixty year old Professor who guides his research, Helmut von Raumer of Freibourg University, turned out to be the proud owner of a Blacks Icelandic sleeping bag, and showed it off with the same pride I used to have in mine. It must have been at least 30 years old and he insisted that it was the best piece of gear he had ever acquired.
I owned a primus stove, but some people still cooked on a fire outside the barn, using a white enamel mashing can with a lid that could be used as a cup. This was used to boil eggs, make tea and sometimes cook soup or porridge. Bacon was either fried using an old shovel or laid on the hot stones around the fire. In accordance with a tradition, which was ascribed to Australian swagmen, some dossers used an empty peach tin with a handle made from heavy fence wire. The peaches were eaten for breakfast using the lid bent to form a spoon. The sides of the tin were then punctured with the heavy spike for getting stones out of horses' hooves, which seem to be an essential part of pen knives in those days. The wire handle was fitted and the can used for cooking. The peach can was thrown away at the end of a weekend. It was the wire handle that was valuable.
Nobody ever had much food at the barn because it was quite likely to get lifted while you were out. We depended on Merve's and pies and chips from the cafe in Bethesda. I seem to recollect that this was also run by Merve. Knorr Swiss packet soups had already appeared but were even more unappetising than they are today.
Without transport, a fire or much food, festering on rainy days until it was time to start walking to the Douglas Arms in Bethesda could be pretty tedious. Alcohol must have an overpowering appeal because we usually got wet walking down, dried out in the pub, and got wet again walking back. I'm not sure I would do this for a pint today.
The Douglas was the nearest pub and here I was initiated into pints of Guinness and sweet cider, and "snake bite", a mixture of rough cider, cheap sherry and black current juice. The cider had an instant effect on empty stomachs, so the trips often resulted in our stumbling back after closing time very drunk and arriving at the barn at midnightwet through. I remain amazed that none of us ever died of exposure, either on the stumble back, or during the night as we snored and dozed, shivering in the straw.
One morning on my way out for a "turkish", during one of the warm downpours that seem to be typical of North Wales in August, I discovered a resident of the barn asleep in a ditch flowing with water. How he survived the night I have no idea, but he went climbing later that day. On another occasion after one particularly drunken night which ended up in a Drill Hall with a group of army squadies, Chiz, who was about to be sick, got thrown out and went to sleep on the grass outside. It was a frosty night, and he spent the next week in the RAF hospital with pneumonia and did not recover properly for months.
On one occasion Bob and George, who had been reading about climbing in the Eastern Alps, decided that they needed to practice a bivouac, so they went up to the east wall of Idwal Slabs and hung in slings all night on Ash Tree Wall. I recall that it rained. I do not know how they survived that either. It certainly revealed strength of character and dedication, or possibly stupidity. I still have not decided.
Climbing.
We combined as a group partially because we were keen and reasonably proficient rock climbers. The qualities we looked for in each other were boldness, an enthusiasm to go out in practically any weather, the commitment to at least start up the first pitch, and if this was successful to lead through without demure. While being taciturn was acceptable, nobody liked exposing their fears, laconic humour was much more respected. A group who could turn every outing, however uncomfortable and frightening, into a good laugh and then, in the pub tell droll stories of incompetence and failure were ideal company. I was slow witted compared to Bob, George, Glen and Chiz nor did I have the confidence to dig up the more loquacious bullshitters with sly jibes like Nick and Pete; so I was a dumb audience on most social occasions, but my company seemed to be appreciated on the hill.
Bold leaders were in demand and so were steady seconds who would follow a route without "chickening out" so that a hazardous retreat was not required. We believed that the rope was much stronger than any individual. All kinds of stratagems were used to make ascents, standing on each others shoulders, lassoing spikes, wearing socks over gym shoes, inserting chock stones into cracks and threading them so that slings could be used for direct aid, pendulums to easier lines and any other ploy that came to mind. The purity of climbing ethics was not really considered, in fact we revelled in cheating. I am sure that we would have considered the arcane ethical debates that I overhear today as precious crap.
The outstanding advantage of starting to climb in this way was that we used our wits to solve problems. We judged a technique as sufficiently secure in the light of our limited experience and intelligent analysis rather than an appeal to tradition or some technical authority. This independence of thought was to serve us in good stead when we eventually visited the Alps and things got more serious. My initial routes in the Austrian Alps with Denny Morehouse were each a succession of unforeseen disasters, from which we escaped by some unorthodox stratagem or other.
Most of us tied directly onto the Viking hawser laid nylon rope, climbed in boots, and carried three or four full weight slings, with ex-WD steel karabiners. Ropes were either 100 or 120 ft long which seems rather short these days. There had been a well known accident on the Yellow Edge when a gritstone climber had fallen off on a traverse, ending up hanging free. He was not carrying a long sling or prusiiks and, because his partner could not pull him back up to the rock, he died. Therefore, we were aware of the possibility of suffocating if we fell off and ended up hanging free.
In the absence of harnesses, an important use of a sling was to clip it through the rope at the waist, step into it and stand up in the sling, in order to take the weight off the midriff and ribcage. Later we learned to pass it through the waist line and slide first one leg through and then by hanging upside down pass the other leg through thereby creating a sit sling. Some of us climbed with this in place on harder routes. Later, when we were in the Dolomites, we usually climbed wearing an improvised sit sling most of the time.
It was also common to carry an open ended prusik, which could either be used to thread small chock stones, or to ascend a rope if we did end up hanging free. The more cunning of us had also adopted the practice of having a number of machine nuts in a pocket to use as artificial chock stones. We soon realised that with the thread bored out these could be kept threaded on a sling and used as pre-threaded chocks. The open ended prusik was also used to get out of the belay system, by using it to connect the loaded rope with the belay, thereby bypassing the belaying climber and making it possible to untie. We also surreptitiously carried the odd peg which we fondly believed we could drive in with a rock if things got particularly tricky.
We practised abseiling but tried not to abseil for real except in the direst emergency, usually preferring to down climb protecting ourselves the best way we could. We did not need to be told that abseiling was dangerous, our guts told us this every time we left a ledge with the rope wrapped round us. We had quickly realised abseiling was a tricky business, and commonly resulted in the rope getting stuck half way up a route, which we could then neither get up or get off. Anyway it was a great dishonour to leave precious gear behind. Eventually when we were required to descend by abseiling in the Dolomites each pitch of the descent was undertaken with trepidation. I have never lost the fear of abseiling. This fear was stimulated by a safety film called "Hazard", produced for the steel industry, and which featured Joe Brown and Don Roscoe climbing in the Dolomites. The film showed a climber dropping his hammer during an abseil descent on the Cima Grande in swirling mist and rain. The insecure peg pulled out as he abseiled and he fell. He was shown injured between the Cima Grande and Cima Piccolisima but was of course rescued by the heroic climbers. My imagination told me that it would be extremely unlikely that I would survive in similar circumstances. I still can not look at a peg with an abseil rope attached to it without the image from this film, of the peg pulling out and the rope snaking down the wall, springing to mind.
Pitches were usually climbed with only one or two runners, draped over the more obvious spikes, so the tradition that the leader must never fall remained the primary rule. It was the leader's job to get the rope up a pitch, tie himself on firmly, and then bring up the second, third and even a fourth person. Then it was the job of the second, third and fourth person to ensure they were tied on firmly, so that they would not get pulled off by the leader if he fell. The leader was belayed with a fairly ineffective shoulder belay. Simple as that. The stances on the easier routes were fairly large so this usually worked quite well. If a leader fell on the more traditional routes, which were often broken by large ledges separated by steep sections of rock, then a serious injury was almost inevitable. If the second was pulled off it was self evident that both would be seriously injured or killed. We did not need to have this explained to us.
In retrospect I cannot understand how we survived, but until we went to Scotland we never had an accident. This accident was not caused by lack of technical knowledge but by stupidity. I was soloing, running the rope out in Clachaig Gully, and fell when a hold broke. I recall hearing of accidents but until I worked temporarily at Ogwen Cottage I never actually saw anybody seriously injured or had to rescue anybody. I have retained the unfashionable conviction that rock climbing is not very dangerous unless the climber is a bit of an idiot and so continue to propagate the ideology that leading rock climbs is a good antidote for idiocy. One way or another it cured me.
Fashion.
Clothing was pretty basic compared with the much better designer fashions of today. It was definitely not every day high street apparel. It set us apart as climbers. Tuff work boots or clumsy Hawkins bendies, socks hanging down round out ankles, breaches made of cotton moleskin or corduroy, an ex-army, khaki, woollen shirt, and a ragged, woollen pullover with holes in the elbows, were the usual fashion. Some people maintained the older convention of wearing a tweed jacket or donkey jacket because it had pockets. Glen and George particularly favoured donkey jackets. It went with the Liverpool image. A reasonable description of our general appearance would be "like a yard of dead hedge".
In bad weather a bleached olive green cotton anorak, a "Blacks Blotter", was worn which was wind proof but not waterproof. Much of the time this was worn tied around the waist by the sleeves and left hanging down like the back half of a kilt. Climbers were almost invisible in the landscape. The bright orange cotton anorak was introduced later to make people more visible on the hill and assist in finding them if they became lost or injured. The promotion of brightly coloured clothes heralded the era of the hills being blighted by dozens of little orange figures thereby giving the impression that the hills were increasingly crowded.
I do not remember specialist waterproofs being available until Helly Hansen started to import the heavy cloth-backed suits in the late sixties. I do not remember having anything but a long nylon cagoule until I began working on the West Coast of Scotland. Many of us used a cycle cape or ex-WD gas capes. These were pretty useless in windy conditions, but were good in warm, heavy rain as there was little condensation. They could be gathered at the waist and tied with a sling. Pac-a-Macs, a transparent plastic mac which folded up into a small bundle, were also used. These were originally marketed as women's wear and I seem to recall Ena Sharples of Coronation Street wore one, so not all of us thought they were quite butch enough for climbers. However, I recently overheard somebody of that era say, "Goretex! I'd rather wear a Pac-a-Mac". I think he was complaining about the cost benefit ratio as much as anything else, but at least Pac-a-Macs kept all the water out ! In the high humidity conditions of the west coast of Scotland Goretex seems to suck water in rather than blow it out.
String vests were often worn under the outer clothes. These no longer seem to be in favour, except with Rab C. Nesbitt, who apparently adopted a string vest for the television series after receiving advice on authentic Govan dress from old "weekenders" who used to work in the Upper Clyde shipyards. String vests kept wet clothing from contact with the skin and maintained small pockets of warm air next to the skin. They also left an appealing diamond shaped pattern on the skin, which itched. Despite this disadvantage I do not remember the same discomfort caused by damp underwear I now experience, especially the clammy back caused by sweating under a rucksack. Not that we carried a rucksack very often. In fact carrying a rucksack was considered unnecessarily laborious and bad form. Nobody wore gaiters or climbing helmets either. I never saw gaiters or climbing helmets in regular use until I went to the Alps, and many people did not wear them there.
Wearing a woolly hat was acceptable but a working man's peaked cap was more usual. A fashion adopted in imitation of Brown and Whillans. Wearing one of these was actually a nuisance when climbing because it often got pulled off while taking slings from around the neck. Nick remains attached to this form of headgear and now looks more like the real thing than Blaster Bates or Fred Dibner. Brightly coloured, thick, woollen balaclavas folded into hats were viewed as faintly ridiculous and only people who stayed in Youth Hostels or huts seemed to wear them. The adverts depicting climbers of the time always showed figures wearing balaclavas but we assumed this must be the headgear of upper class twits or Lake District climbers because nobody from our fraternity would have been seen wearing one. If anybody had one it was kept out of sight deep in the pocket of a donkey jacket and only used in really extreme conditions and then with some embarrassment. I seem to remember Glen guiltily putting one on as we descended from Glyder Fach towards the Devil's Kitchen while a strong north west wind drove a wet snow blizzard painfully into our faces.
We swaggered about with climbing ropes, coiled in the traditional style, carried diagonally across the shoulders, with three or four long full weight slings with heavy iron ex-WD karabiners hung around our neck. Some of us used lengths of hemp cord as a waistline, wrapped around the waist three or four times and tied with a double fisherman's knot. From the waist occasionally hung a pair of black plimsolls. Later we upgraded this form of footwear and adopted either grey suede Austrian Berg klettershue or green suede versions of the same thing made in Manchester by Ellis Brigham, the original EBs. The klettershue were tight fitting and flexible with thin vibram soles and were a great improvement on plimsolls. The "tigers", those who were climbing in Llanberis Pass, were beginning to adopt PAs but we were vociferously traditionalist and decried these as unacceptable climbing aids. I have retreated a long way from this purist position and now put sticky boots on to climb V Diffs and have chalk right up to my elbows.
There was a sharp cultural division between Ogwen climbers and the hardmen of the "Pass", but when we joined the MMC, stayed at Cae'r Fran and climbed on Snowdon and in Llanberis Pass we quickly changed to the jeans and PAs which were in vogue over there. In the "Pass" it was not considered acceptable to be dressed up as climbers, the transition from the crag to the Vaynol had to be made quickly, and it was important to be seen in jeans, even if they were the style disasters of the period, drainpipes or flares. Not dressing up in "shite catchers" but wearing jeans and trainers indicated a higher position in the mountaineering social order; boots and breeches became the sure sign of a fell walker. Even today in the Fort William, Nevis Bar the sarcastic query, "Yer no one a them hill walkers ur ya ?" can still deflate a climber wearing the most expensive Berghaus or North Face gear.
Physical fitness.
We were not very fit, although young and agile, and hardly ever went far up the hill. After climbing all the mountains around Llyn Idwal I revisited them only rarely. We regarded it as a long, hard, mountaineering day if we went up to the east face of Tryfan to do Munich Climb or to Glyder Fach to do Lot"s Wife and Lot"s Groove, and a major expedition to go to Craig yr Isfa to do Mur y Niwl. We would not have dreamed of walking over the Glyders and back to climb in the Pass. This seems extremely indolent after years of living in Scotland, where a crag with an approach of less than an hour is regarded as being by the roadside and the North Face of Ben Nevis is thought of as a relatively short walk in. It was to be some years before I fully realised how uniquely concentrated and close to the road most of the Welsh crags are. I vividly recall toiling up the hill, without even a rucksack, thinking it an uncomfortably long distance to Bochlwyd Buttress, and I was a keen walker compared with some !
Climbing was more a way of life than a sport and contrasted sharply with our lives back in the city. It was a sort of irresponsible gang life with a morally acceptable and exciting purpose. It was more akin to what in Scotland would still be described as "weekending"; going out to the bothies in the Highlands and dossing about and doing some climbing if the weather was reasonably OK. I remember I wanted to be a "climber" as if it was a state of existence quite distinct from every other category or aspect of life. This viewpoint was reinforced when we read "Nanga Parbat Pilgrimage" and found out about the Austrian climber Hermann Buhl. He became our next hero. Not having any real idea of the distances involved, I could not wait to travel by bicycle with a rucksack on my back from Landeck to Promontogno, get off, walk up to the Sciora hut, and next day climb the North Face of Piz Badile solo, climb down the North Ridge and cycle back to Innsbruck ! It was to be a long time before I properly understood what this implied in terms of fitness and endurance.
Part 2
The Merseyside Mountaineering Club and Cae'r Fran.
Joining the club
As I recall we ended up in the MMC as a result of Bob, George, Nick, Pete and Glen attending a course on rock climbing run at a Liverpool technical college. I learned later, when I was studying the development of adult education, that at this time there was a great deal of public concern about rebellious adolescent males destabilising society and so resources were put into adult education for those who had left school at fourteen. I imagine the course was funded because of such an initiative. The sixties generation has been blamed ever since for every social malaise, we obviously had it far too easy, but I remember Harold MacMillan telling us in the 50s that we " had never had it so good", as if this was a major achievement of Conservative Government. It just shows that blaming the victim goes back a long way in political propaganda. Thankfully the girls of the time share much of the blame, as indeed they should, because they were most often the cause of our moral decline. Recently I have begun to wish they had restrained their political ambitions to just becoming equal.
The instructor for the course was somebody who already belonged to the MMC, which was at the time a recently formed club. I recall, but not with any certainty, that this was the boy friend of the sister of Chris Shannon, Ray Harold. Anyway as a result of attending the course Bob, George, Nick, Pete and Glen, learned a lot more about the technicalities of climbing and applied to join the MMC. At about the same time, it must have been about 1962 or 63, the MMC had just taken a lease on Cae'r Fran from Malcolm McKinnon.
I was told about the club and hut in glowing terms, just below "Cloggy", with beds, gas stove and sink with running water. It was also just up the road from the pubs in Llanberis. This sounded vastly superior to a barn miles away from the nearest pub. They suggested I apply for membership as well. Chiz had left Valley and was stationed at St. Athens in South Wales and was preparing to buy himself out of the RAF. Bernie had emigrated to South Africa to work as a book salesman; he was later to be recruited as a Congo mercenary. It looked as if I would be alone over in Ogwen so I applied to join and was accepted.
The next chapter of our climbing experience began.
Clubs.
We new very little about climbing clubs and club etiquette and had no interest in the subtle snobbery attached to belonging to one exclusive club or another. I do not think I was aware that there were clubs such as the Climbers Club, the Fell and Rock, the Alpine Club or the Yorkshire Ramblers. I had always assumed I would not like the company of the sort of people who used the club huts at Helyg or Inys Ettws. They seemed to talk in loud voices, appeared to be terribly self assured and were not very welcoming when I visited the huts to meet people. They seemed to personify the "officer class", a section of the society I carefully avoided in my free time.
The MMC.
The MMC was started by such climbers as Fred Smith, Jack Drummond, Alan Stuart and others who were experienced club mountaineers, some of whom were members of the Wayfarers or other Lancashire climbing clubs. I have never found out why as members of other clubs they decided to start the MMC, perhaps it was because they wanted a hut in North Wales. At the time most of the huts were in the Lake District, there were relatively few in Wales. They were also closely associated with other personalities involved in climbing during the post war years. There were other members who were professional people. I recall there were a number of teachers. The members of the club, although strangers, were quite different from those I had met elsewhere. They were ordinary, friendly and welcoming. In fact the egalitarian and hospitable atmosphere of the club became its hallmark. At the time we took it all very much for granted, and I can not even remember the names of the committee or club officers of the period.
Meets.
Club meets were something of a culture shock for both parties, particularly for us. We had to be house trained.
There were complaints about us treating the hut like a barn; we were reported as having put our climbing boots on the kitchen table and leaving without sweeping the floor. I think a comment was made to this effect in the Hut Book. We did not often bother to leave a record of where we were going in the Hut Book and completely failed to understand that this was a safety precaution adopted from Alpine hut practice. This was partly because we did not think it was anybody else's business, but also because we had usually not made a decision before we left the hut. We were also disinclined to do the washing-up after breakfast, preferring to get up late and rush off, leaving any household chores until the evening. We never noticed when we got back that they had apparently been done by the fairies, and so set about making another mess. There were counter accusations that Cae'r Fran was not a climber's club hut but a teacher's rest home. When I became a teacher I quickly understood why teachers need a rest home, its the essential alternative to the "nut house". I imagine that they felt pretty aggrieved at having to spend their weekends as well as the working week with disorganised, anarchic yobs. I understand that at the time there was some animosity, but I was not a witness of this because I could not attend the mid-week evening meet at a pub in Liverpool. It never actually came to a head in the hut although there were occasions when there was a lot of scowling faces and muttering in the kitchen. Glen seemed to take the criticisms quite hard but they just seemed to roll off Bob and George like water off a duck's back.
Fred treated us extremely well and seemed to be greatly amused by George, Bob, Nick and Glen. He showed us what was expected by getting up early, making everybody a brew and often cooking a breakfast for us. He also exemplified what running a club implied; organising meets, sorting out transport, arranging all the food, presiding over communal cooking, cleaning up before leaving and taking away the garbage at the end of the weekend. We went climbing with Alan Stuart who was very quiet and uncommunicative but climbed very well and was really fit. He went to the Western Alps every summer; I believe at the time he had more than twenty seasons behind him. He showed me what climbing on Lliwedd in the wet was all about when we climbed Avalanche and Red Wall on a really greasy, damp day.
Housetraining.
The young team committed all the crimes; we turned up on meets without telling the meet organiser; left food around when we departed; failed to turn off the water or electricity; left dirty frying pans; failed to take our garbage away and regarded encouraging the presence of rats and mice as environmental protection. I sometimes wonder whether the older members of the club regretted that we had ever been accepted as club members.
Soon it was our turn to organise meets. This taught some salutary lessons. I seem to recall that Pete was an early convert to planning and organisation and quickly became proficient. I never actually organised a meet because I was so remote from everybody else but I noticed a sudden change. The lazy louts of former times suddenly became terribly responsible. Catering was the first vertical learning curve, as none of us really new anything about the quantities necessary for a club meet. The daunting excesses of rice and potatoes still come to mind; there were occasions when even Nick could not finish them off. Cooking was quite taxing especially as we did not know what ingredients to put in particular meals. Meals such as chili con carne, spaghetti bolognese or lasagne were pretty exotic in those days, mince and tatties and curry and rice were the staples. I remember some mutterings that it was OK for the older members, they had wives or girlfriends. I often wondered whether the final stimulus to get a girlfriend came from the necessity of organising club meets, because Bob, George and Glen got girlfriends soon after joining the MMC. I put it down to their weakening moral fibre and remained dedicated to climbing and celibacy. I only ended up with a regular girlfriend when I was adopted by one at College, and she has looked after me ever since.
Work meets.
The next revelation were the work meets. These were very necessary in the early days as a lot of work had to be done to modify Cae'r Fran. Indoors had to be decorated, and the outside woodwork painted. I think some of the floor boards and windows had to be replaced, George came into his own as a joiner. As an apprentice engineer Bob turned his hand to plumbing. I got involved with the rough squad who were only suitable for outdoor work. This squad was dominated by Nick Jones. I retain the impression that he broke more things than he mended, but this impression may have been false, because he eventually became responsible for the maintenance of the hut and the mainstay of work meets.
An early achievement of the outside squad was the ladies toilet. This was created in one of the old outhouses, an old pig sty, which had to be rebuilt. The roof was very low, there was no light, the floor was very uneven and the chemical toilet unsteady. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night must have been a truly unpleasant experience, especially as the entrance became thick with mud in bad weather and was overgrown with nettles. The outside squad were very proud of their achievement and found the moans from the females extremely hurtful. Nick has been permanently scarred by this female criticism and continues to speak of "moaning women". Clearly his capacity to mature into a politically correct new man has been permanently stunted by this psycho-social mauling. We even went to the trouble of walking for miles to find flat stones for the girls to walk on to get across the mud; the ingratitude was quite breathtaking.
The male toilet was in an airy position, out in the middle of the field and it was possible to sit looking out at the mountains above Llyn Padarn, reading a book on festering days. The extreme isolation of the toilet made it necessary for it to be assigned to the males. They were obviously less at risk of molestation when wandering around the open fields in the middle of the night, anyway it had a better view. The world has definitely changed since then. Today I would not have the temerity to collude in such male chauvinism.
The other job of the outside squad was burying the contents of the chemical toilets when they were full. I must have been pretty handless or easily put upon, because whenever I attended a work meet, everybody had an important task except me. As all the jobs had been allocated, I would be left like the last boy to be selected for the two football teams during a games lesson. The meet organiser would look at me, feign to be carefully thinking of some nearly forgotten minor job, then ask me, almost as if it was an afterthought, to go and help Nick empty the toilet buckets.
This was a really noisome and unpleasant task. A hole had to be dug up in the fields, in an area designated by Mr. MacKinnon, which was pretty water logged to start with. The sods and earth were carefully put to one side. The buckets, which were often nearly overflowing, then had to be carried across the rough ground without stumbling to avoid a pile of shit and chemicals being splashed down a leg. If I were lucky some other poor sucker would help to carry the buckets with a long stick passed through the handle and held one at each end. This was usually Nick. This was not so much of an improvement as the bucket would swing and spill, soiling the sides. It then had to be poured into the hole, very carefully to avoid splash back into your face. The hole then had to be refilled and the sods replaced. The nausea induced by this job was only later equaled when I was eventually forced to change my son's nappies.
Eventually however we became properly integrated into one of the most integrated, friendly and egalitarian of clubs. We even became sufficiently housetrained to be allowed to go on meets at huts of clubs with which we had reciprocal rights, particularly the Wayfarers' hut in Langdale.