I had recently completed my Single Pitch Award training course through the Mountain Leader Training Board. The first formal stage towards qualifying to lead and supervise groups at outdoor climbing venues. The course had given me a much more systematic understanding of ropes, belaying, anchors and the responsibility involved in looking after other climbers.
What it had not given me was much experience of sport climbing outdoors.
Most of my climbing until then had been on traditional routes, placing nuts, hexes and other protection as I climbed. Portland offered something different: compact limestone, closely spaced fixed protection and unfamiliar lower-off systems. This weekend would be my first proper introduction to climbing on bolts outside.
The SPA course had not been specifically about sport climbing, but its emphasis on secure systems, careful checks and personal responsibility gave me a useful foundation. Portland was where I would begin applying those principles in a very different climbing environment.
It would also mark the beginning of friendships that became far more important than any of the routes we climbed.
Looking back, that was often how university mountaineering club trips worked. At the time, they felt like ordinary weekends of climbing, eating cheap food and overcrowded tents. Only years later did some of them reveal themselves as turning points.
Friday:
Dad dropped me at Warwick University Sports Centre. I had already moved out of my first year room on campus but had not yet moved into the shared student house in Leamington Spa where I would be living with friends. For the moment, I was between homes as well as between my first and second years at university.
Around the Sports Centre, people gradually appeared carrying rucksacks, ropes and the collection of loosely packed equipment that accompanied most WUMC trips.
Shortly after five o’clock, we divided ourselves between two cars. I travelled with Sam and Jammie, while Ian, Paula, Steve and Mel went in the other.
I had been appointed navigator. This was before smartphones and satellite navigation, so my tools consisted of written directions and a hand drawn map. There was always an element of faith involved in giving directions from the passenger seat, especially when several road junctions looked nothing like the sketch Mel had produced.
We stopped for chips on the journey south, an almost compulsory part of a university climbing trip, before continuing to Mel’s parents house in Bournemouth.
The conversation there quickly turned to cars. It briefly moved on to boats, touched on climbing and then returned, almost inevitably, to cars. This appeared to be a subject on which some members of the group could continue indefinitely.
Eventually, we headed towards Portland and found our campsite. The tents went up as the light faded and, after the drive from Warwick, we settled down for the night.
Saturday Morning:
The next morning, we drove to Neddyfields on Portland’s North Cliff. We stopped at a climbing shop on the way to buy a topo: a basic guide showing the positions and grades of the routes.
Portland was unlike the gritstone and mountain crags on which I had gained much of my experience. The routes were protected by metal staples fixed into the limestone with resin. Rather than selecting and placing protection in cracks, the leader clipped quickdraws into permanent anchors as they climbed.
The staples were distinctive U shaped sections of stainless steel, chemically bonded into drilled holes in the rock. By then, resin fixed staples had become characteristic of Portland’s development as a sport-climbing venue.
For me, this was new territory. The fundamental climbing skills were familiar but sport climbing introduced a different rhythm. Instead of pausing to search for protection placements, the leader followed the line of staples, clipped each one and continued towards a fixed lower off at the top.
Reaching the top also introduced another important procedure. On many routes, the climber could not simply clip a large karabiner and be lowered. The rope had to be passed through the fixed anchor safely before the leader could descend.
This required care. The climber needed to remain securely attached to the anchor while reorganising the rope, threading it through the lower off and checking the system before asking to be lowered. It was the sort of process where a small misunderstanding could have serious consequences.
My SPA training had helped me think more carefully about rope systems, anchors and checks. Portland was an opportunity to apply that more disciplined approach in a different climbing environment.
We spent the morning seconding routes. Someone else led, clipping the staples and setting up the rope, while I followed.
Seconding offered a gentler introduction to the rock. I could concentrate on the climbing itself: learning how the limestone felt, finding the holds and beginning to understand the style of movement it required.
We climbed in the morning sunshine until the sun moved around and the cliff fell into shade. Even without leading, I was absorbing a great deal watching how other people clipped, how they managed the rope and how they dealt with the anchors at the top.
Climbing with new people also involved learning about them. You began to recognise who climbed quickly, who paused to examine every move and who remained calm when a route became awkward. Trust developed through the small routines of tying in, checking each other and holding the rope.
After the morning session, we drove to Portland Bill for tea.
That pause between climbing sessions was part of the pleasure of the weekend. We could sit down, recover and talk about the routes without immediately having to decide who was leading next.
Portland Bill also felt like a destination in its own right. At the exposed southern end of the island, the lighthouse stood above a coastline shaped by waves and weather, with the sea stretching away in almost every direction.
In the afternoon, we moved to Battleship Edge.
This was where I began leading on fixed protection outdoors for the first time.
Technically, clipping a staple was simpler than placing traditional protection. I did not have to select a nut, judge whether it fitted the crack and consider how it might behave under load. But leading still felt very different from seconding.
I was responsible for my own progress and for managing the rope. I had to leave the reassurance of the last staple, locate the next one, clip the quickdraw and then clip the rope without back clipping it or becoming tangled.
There was also the unfamiliar psychological effect of climbing between fixed points of protection. The staples might have been secure, but I still had to move away from the safety of one before reaching the next. Knowing that the equipment was reliable did not remove the nervousness of being on the sharp end of the rope.
I led several routes and gradually became more comfortable with the process.
The experience brought together several strands of my climbing development. My SPA course had made me think more carefully about systems and safety. My traditional climbing had given me experience of leading above protection. Portland allowed me to apply those foundations to a different style of climbing.
Afterwards, I lay in the sunshine, tired and satisfied. It was the particular kind of exhaustion that came from concentrating for hours as well as climbing part physical effort, part accumulated nervous energy.
That evening, we found a pub and ate. Later, somebody suggested walking down to the sea.
Somehow, despite being on an island, we failed to find it. Instead, we ended up in a local play park, sitting on the swings. Nothing especially important appeared to be happening. We were simply tired climbers laughing at our own failed expedition.
Yet these were the moments through which friendships formed: the conversations, wrong turns and small shared absurdities that gradually turned a collection of people into a community.
I was still learning how to become part of that community. It was not something I could achieve through climbing grades or personal ambition. Belonging grew through being present, sharing the journey and joining in with whatever the weekend happened to produce even when that was a children’s play park rather than the sea.
When we returned to the campsite, I took down my own tent. By squeezing into a rather battered Terra Nova with Steve and Mel, we could reduce the number of tents for which we had to pay.
I could not have known how significant that weekend would become, or how important Mel would later be in my life. I did not yet know how many other trips, climbs and adventures would follow.
The beginning of an important friendship does not necessarily announce itself. Sometimes it looks like three people squeezed into an old tent because they are trying to save a few pounds.
Sunday:
Sunday morning developed slowly. We packed away the tents and ate breakfast. We then headed to Blacknor South.
I climbed with Sam on the fallen slab. He attempted an E2 5c, a technically difficult and psychologically demanding traditional route, and had to work hard for it.
I stayed within more comfortable territory, leading some VDiffs. They were much easier routes, but that suited where I was in my development. I could concentrate on moving well, placing protection and making sensible decisions rather than simply surviving the difficulty.
There is a tendency to remember climbing through grades, as though progress can be reduced to a list of increasingly difficult routes. Yet some of the most useful climbing takes place below a person’s limit. Easier routes provide time to practise ropework, protection and judgement without every decision being dominated by the next move.
At about five o’clock, we packed the equipment and began the journey home.
We followed the Mazda in convoy until motorway traffic slowed to a crawl and we managed to slip past. Eventually back at the University, Dad collected me and I returned home.
At the time, this probably felt like a fairly typical WUMC trip.
We drove somewhere, climbed, ate, visited a pub and slept in overcrowded tents.
I also gained valuable climbing experience. Portland introduced me properly to outdoor sport climbing and resin fixed staples. I learned more about clipping fixed protection, managing the rope and using lower-off anchors. I began turning the principles I had encountered on my SPA training course into habits that worked on real rock.
Climbing was beginning to mean more than the activity itself. It was giving me a community and opening a doorway into friendships I could not yet imagine.
That first weekend at Portland did not feel momentous while it was happening. It was simply another university adventure.
But some of the most important moments in life arrive without ceremony. Only when we look back do we recognise that an ordinary weekend was quietly setting the direction for everything that followed.