Tides by Nick Bullock

Author:Nick Bullock [Nick Bullock]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911342892
Publisher: Vertebrate Publishing
Published: 2018-12-29T16:00:00+00:00

The day after mine and Tim’s ascent of La Lyre, two French guides, Luc Avogadro and Eric Lazard, were killed when attempting the Cascade du Folly, a line to the right. Supposedly the pillar they were climbing collapsed and they both fell to their deaths. One week later, the French brothers Benoit and Vincent Drouillat also died, struck by falling ice as they descended La Lyre.

– Chapter 19 –

evening redness in the west

Summer 2009

Llanberis, Wales

The Hippy, Tim Neill and myself walked the exposed north Anglesey coastal path heading once again to Equestrian Wall. The day was bright. The sea’s surface appeared almost glazed. The breeze blowing off the water was dense with salt and that salt caught my face. I stood and watched a gannet repeating a circular flight path across the sea’s surface.

Warm-ups completed – although after Crazy Horse and Captain Mark Phillips, Tim looked more overdone than warm – I checked out the direct finish to the route I had climbed with Dan McManus last year, with fresh eyes. The gear still looked poor and the holds still looked limited. I brushed and cleaned a line, but it was impossible to see how I was going to join it together. The Hippy lowered me on a top rope and I stopped in the long narrow pod, the last in the line of three from The Crossing – the route from last year. Inside the pod, once again I became intimate with the rock and the earth. In a strange way, I felt at peace deep inside the ancient coastline. Something familiar stirred. The hollow echoes of the sea made me feel secure, almost like a child with his ear to a shell, hidden in the shadows beneath the stairs.

As a child I used to sit and lean back against the old armchair between Dad’s knees as he watched TV. Occasionally he would squeeze me with his knees and rub my head. These are the most affectionate and intimate moments I can remember with Dad. He has never told me he loves me. Dad’s closeness moves in different ways.

When I was eleven, I was a member of the Cheadle Health and Strength Club, a weights gym situated in an old chapel in the centre of Cheadle. One year at the Cheadle Festival the club held a competition, something like the programme that was once on TV called Superstars. The competition had ten events over two days with the final event an 800-metre run around a track in the centre of the festival field. I was leading the overall competition. My friend Alan Johnson, who could not win the overall competition, but was by far the best runner, was also competing, as well as his cousin Pete, who could win the overall competition if he finished ahead of me. Dad came to me and said I should talk to Alan and ask him to run side by side to block his cousin from finishing in front of me. This was

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