In 1998, I travelled to Tremadog for the Warwick University Mountaineering Club dinner meet.
It became a weekend of first lead climbs, club elections and a performance of Wonderwall that I was very pleased to finish. More importantly, it marked the moment when I moved from being a relatively new member of the club to having some responsibility for shaping it.
Friday:
Ed, Rob, Mark and I travelled to Tremadog directly from university, stopping at a pub on the way.
Those were the days when weekend climbing trips felt like a desperate scramble. You squeezed out of your final lecture, threw your equipment into a vehicle, raced towards last orders and hoped to reach the accommodation before everyone settled in for the night.
We arrived at Eric’s barn to find one minibus already there. We referred to it as the sensible climbers’ bus.
The other vehicle, inevitably known as the mad bus, was still on its way.
When it eventually arrived, Spencer was already heavily drunk and continuing to get worse. Stories tumbled out about the journey. There had apparently been an attempt to steal a set of traffic lights, and at some point Spencer had escaped from the vehicle and run down a road wearing only his boxer shorts.
Another member, Jamie, had climbed over a wall, fallen into a stream and hit his head on a metal pipe. He had needed to go to hospital.
In the months afterwards these incidents were retold as entertainment, but even at the time for me as a fresher there was an uncomfortable edge to them. What sounded funny once everyone was safely inside could easily have ended very differently. I remember sitting with Sickly, our social secretary, feeling like I was observing something I didn’t quite understand.
Nearly thirty years later, I can recognise what I was doing. I was observing, processing and trying to make sense of a drinking culture that was enthusiastic, unthinking and sometimes genuinely dangerous.
It felt very different from the school expeditions I had joined during the previous decade.
On trips to places such as the Isle of Rum and Knoydart, the adults leading us had been people I respected deeply. They were experienced fell runners, climbers and mountaineers who shared their knowledge carefully. Risk was present but it was considered and managed rather than treated as an incidental part of a good night out.
The university club was a different world. It was louder, less supervised and far more dependent on the judgement of people who were themselves still very young.
Saturday:
I woke on Saturday knowing that I was going to attempt my first lead climb.
The route was Oberon, a multipitch climb at Tremadog. I’d be climbing with Mark Caddy and Dave “The Hair”.
I was nervous in the way you are before crossing a genuine threshold. I was not especially frightened by the climbing itself but I understood that leading was different. Until that point, someone else had been making the key decisions. They selected the line, placed the protection and accepted responsibility for moving upwards.
Once you lead, that responsibility becomes yours.
The climb went well, although there was one memorable lesson at the first belay stance. I pulled up the rope to prepare to belay my second and watched most of the protection I had placed pop out under the upward pull.
The pieces clattered down the route.
There was a moment of mild panic, a bit of jovial banter and the climb continued, but it was the sort of lesson that stayed with me. Placing gear was not simply about making something appear secure while standing beside it. You had to think about the direction from which the rope might pull as you climbed above.
We met a group from Coventry University on the route. Afterwards, we went to Eric’s Café for lunch.
At the time, Eric’s felt legendary. It was part café, part meeting point and part unofficial headquarters for climbing at Tremadog. Years later, I would return to see it had closed, likely a victim of the challenges businesses had during covid, its former role apparently reduced to little more than a vending machine.
We spent much of the afternoon in the sunshine but I was distracted by something entirely unrelated to climbing.
That evening, the club would hold its committee elections over dinner at the local pub. I wanted to stand for treasurer.
The tradition was that candidates did not make conventional speeches explaining what they hoped to contribute. They sang and I chose Wonderwall by Oasis.
Looking back, I am certain my daughter could produce a far better performance. At the time, I was simply grateful when it ended.
It was harmless compared with some of the club’s other rituals but it still felt like an unusual test of belonging. Rather than demonstrate that you understood budgets, transport costs or the responsibilities of committee membership, you proved your commitment by standing in front of everyone and embarrassing yourself in a very specific way.
Before the dinner, Sam returned from climbing and asked whether anyone wanted to attempt Striptease, another multipitch route at Tremadog. I agreed to belay him.
We started the climb but ran out of daylight and had to abseil back down. There was something fitting about it. I had already completed my first lead that morning so now it was time to back of my first multi pitch route.
Now it was time to face the song. The evening brought the big club dinner, the committee elections and my performance of Wonderwall.
Later, around ten of us set off through the woods in the dark with only two torches between us. Some people had acquired bottles of spirits. I cannot now remember what the purpose of the expedition was, assuming there ever was one.
At some point I must have returned and gone to bed, although I have no clear memory of how the evening finished.
Looking back, I need to be honest about what that weekend represented.
The drinking was relentless and often unthinking. Spencer’s behaviour could be made to sound funny in the retelling but it was also a consequence of a culture that treated extreme intoxication as entertainment. Jamie’s accident could have been much worse. Even the election song, although relatively harmless, formed part of a wider pattern in which people demonstrated their commitment by submitting to rituals that made them uncomfortable.
The club was not deliberately cruel. Most people were simply repeating the traditions they had inherited and enjoying the freedom of being away from lectures, supervision and ordinary responsibilities.
But the culture could be exhausting. Belonging often appeared to depend on your willingness to drink, laugh at yourself and tolerate being laughed at by everyone else.
And yet the weekend also contained something powerful.
I had completed my first lead climb. I was forming genuine friendships. I was surrounded by people who wanted to spend their weekends on rock and in the mountains. The club had energy, knowledge and the ability to open doors to experiences I could not yet have organised alone.
The question I was beginning to ask, although I could not yet have articulated it clearly, was this:
Could I remain part of this community while helping to shape it into something that sat more comfortably with who I was?
The election song turned out to be part of the answer.
Sunday:
On Sunday morning, I woke as the new WUMC treasurer.
It was only a student club position but it meant more to me than handling subscriptions, accommodation payments and minibus costs.
It gave me a place within the decision making of the club.
That day, I climbed Knell for a Jackdaw and Hail Bebe with the other Mark. Both routes felt satisfying, particularly after the nerves and lessons of the previous day.
The rest of Sunday dissolved into sunshine, chips and conversations with Dave and Mark Caddy. Later, a smaller group of us, including Mark, Dave, Beardy and Nick, went to the pub.
Over the following years, I witnessed the culture of the club evolving. The change was not dramatic or immediate. I would not claim that we transformed everything.
But I like to think the committee nudged the club towards becoming something I could feel proud of, and something that reflected at least part of who I was.
Monday:
The journey back to Warwick involved stopping at a gear shop and inevitably, another pub.
Once we reached the university, we cleaned ourselves up and a group of us went to Top Banana at the students’ union. One of the older club members challenged me to match him drink for drink.
I nearly managed it, but not quite. Peer pressure is not always loud or aggressive. Sometimes it presents itself as friendship, tradition or a harmless challenge.
I had never been able to match some of my friends when drinking, nor had I ever been particularly interested in trying. My best nights at the union were the drum and bass events and the alternative hip hop sessions on Thursdays. We might have a beer early in the evening but then we would dance and drink water for the rest of the night.
That felt far more natural to me. It offered community without turning alcohol into a test.
But on that Monday, I accepted the challenge. I nearly succeeded and survived, although probably not with much dignity.
In a few weekends time another challenge was already waiting.
The next major adventure would be the Welsh 3000s, an attempt to travel over all the mountains above 3,000 feet in Snowdonia during the May bank holiday weekend.
I would be doing it with my good friend Tim and a group made up largely of experienced Lake District fell runners. They were older than me and knew exactly what they were doing.
That journey would place me close to the edge of my ability, but within a very different culture. It would return me to something more familiar: challenge combined with experience, judgement and mentorship.