I remember the sky that day – I remember the stink of it; grey, dank, claustrophobic.

A mid-term despondency had set in. Too tired, behind on my work, not enjoying the subjects and making a mess of finishing a relationship that had lost its sparkle; I needed to get away. A hastily made plan saw Richard and I walking out to the motorway junction in a grey drizzle that matched my mood perfectly. We had scrounged together hurriedly a rope of dubious age, two harnesses and a small selection of ironmongery. I had forgotten the tent but remembered a marker pen and cardboard - “North Please”.

Faced with Hobson's choice of answering the standard questions to the driver or trying to persuade me to stop wallowing, Richard wisely chose the driver. By Sheffield both the day and my mood were brighter and a bacon sandwich at the station completed the transformation.

So it was well into the afternoon by the time we set off up the hill from Hathersage for my first sight of Stanage. I was desperately trying to get my head round the quick-fire crash course in climbing that Richard was spouting over his shoulder...and then there it was. Sculptural in the afternoon light and shadow. Miles of it.

Richard led a couple of things in his tidy and efficient style. I clinked up behind fretfully. It was all so rounded and unlikely. Then it happened.

“Why don't you have a look at this?”

The crack looked steep and wide. I could see footholds for the first bit and a little nose to stand on if I could get out from under the overhang. I didn't want to think much further than that.

“Oh. OK.” It didn't take long to swap the gear – a big hex and a few Moacs. I set off. I got the hex in just under the roof and teetered out, heaving myself round onto the nose and paused. The next move was ok; and the next. I didn't dare look down but was aware of a strange condensing feeling; the world shrinking down and everything else receding, leaving just me, just these holds in front of me, just this moment.

Of course, what I really wanted just at this moment was some more gear...but I'd used the big hex and everything else didn't even touch the sides. I started to wobble. It seemed easier to wobble upwards as wobbling the other way would require me to look down. So I made a couple more steps up and then a couple more, the rope now trailing uselessly below. How was it possible to get so pumped without anything positive to hold on to?

Eventually the top came in reach and I flopped over, dragging ragged, grunts of air into my lungs.

“Are you safe?” floated up.

“I think so, but I'm just having a little lie down.”

Richard strolled up, flicking the lonely hex out on his way without pausing.

“Nice one”, he said, sitting down next to me in the evening sun, and the sky was lemon, no it was golden, no, honeysuckle – a sky so rich that a fragrance lingered. I still remember that smell.