Kieran Cunningham writes about his favourite route: a local line that taught him a valuable lesson...

Fifty yards from the M90, less than half a mile from the Forth Road Bridge in Fife, a litter-strewn path bisects a wooded slope and emerges in an enclave formed by 10-metre walls of reddish rock. 

I've never seen anything like it. The ground is carpeted in litter, broken glass, and dog poo of varying vintages. A disemboweled sofa sits like an altar in the nave of the enclave, beside it a capsized shopping cart surrounded by empty beer cans and bottles. A few rebellious snowdrops and sprigs of grass only emphasise how little of the terrain has not been claimed by human or animal refuse. The rock itself is some kind of dolerite composed of pillars and rectangular blocks which seem to have the structural integrity of puff pastry, and is covered in graffiti — not the artsy kind, but football slogans, genitalia, random blasphemy, and pejorative aspersions of various mothers and sisters.

It's a bit of a dump, I think, already peeved that I've used a day of annual leave to be here. Then: beggars can't be choosers.

Three months ago I'd returned to Scotland for the first time in twenty years, the last seven of which I'd spent in northern Italy, a stone's throw from the Bregaglia Range and the trad-climbing paradise of Val di Mello, not to mention dozens of world-class sport crags. 

I'd come home to look after my elderly and sick parents, but upon my return had succumbed to a bout of ill-health that had landed me in hospital and kept me away from climbing for three months. In the past week, I'd started to feel strong enough to get back on rock, but had been limited to whatever I could find within a short distance of home — the East Neuk of Fife — lest something happen with my parents. Thus far the crags I'd visited had been diminutive, chossy, shabby affairs, each looking like something Val di Mello's Dimore degli Dei or Precipizio degli Asteroidi might have excreted after a night on the town. 

This crag, Rosyth Quarry, is the fourth on the list of five crags I've earmarked that are within an acceptable distance of home. Without even venturing to sample its offerings, I know that climbing here won't do anything to raise my spirits or make me feel any better about being stuck in this particularly rockless portion of Scotland for the foreseeable. 

I was beginning to despair, already sensing that I was a few months into a personal Dark Age.

I return to my car and set off for the next and last crag on my list, Limekilns. The crag, my guidebook tells me, comprises two limestone blocks a few hundred metres apart. Knowing I'm still weak, I set off in search of the one with the gentler grades, the Gellet Block. I find it in a small clearing atop the forested hill behind the village — a squat, crooked, cuboid block of limestone standing like a project commenced by some mythological colossus then abandoned before completion, probably in favour of something more substantial. Something more like a real crag. I do a lap to see if the other faces are more appealing, more featured, and maybe longer, but only confirm that twelve metres of stolid face-climbing is standard on all sides. If the crag were a biscuit, it'd be a digestive rather than a cantuccini or amaretti; if it were a meal, a paltry portion of leftover stovies rather than a feast of gnocchi alla sorrentina or carbonara alla romana. 

But it's something. 

I climb the crooked staircase around the back of the block and position my static over an HVS called Forbidden Colours. The climbing is short-lived and unexceptional, but an upgrade on anything I'd done at Craiglug, Ratho, or the quarry I'd found near Colinsburgh. I climb five of the face's seven routes before dark. My initial disrelish eases as I go, as I learn to work with the rock's slickness and aim for the myriad fossils that protrude from the sedimentary substratum, all of which, though tiny, provide much more reliable foot placements than the well-used ledges and rails. 

Before heading home, I inspect the other faces again. By now, the sun has made an appearance and, as always in Scotland, provoked a thoroughgoing, water-into-wine transformation of the scene, turning the rock's drab grey into sparkling white gold and placing all of its minute features in stark relief.

On the south face, I espy two rusted pitons around four and eight metres up. I trace a line from the ground, up through a blank-looking overlap into steeper terrain between the mid-point and top. It's the steepest of the walls and would offer maybe as much as 13 metres of climbing — some 487 short of the last climb I'd done in Val di Mello but, again, something. I'm too knackered and short on time to attempt it today, but already grateful to have a reason to return.

I wake early the next morning and rope a neighbour into parent-sitting duties for the day. By 7:30 a.m. I'm back at the crag, dropping a static down the line on the south face. 

I pull onto the rock, fumbling sleepily upward on slender but positive rails formed by the striated band of rock at the crag's base. From a thin ledge a few metres up, I try to go direct, but each investigative fondle above me encounters nothing useful. Glancing to my right, I see traces of chalk on a blocky protrusion. I shuffle along the ledge on tiny edges and reach for a gaston, forcing myself into a cross-though for a cobblestone crimp, and then pull over the small bulge on a series of fossil-encrusted crimps and oblong pinches. Though I'm trying to move efficiently, I can't help but notice the colouring and texture of what I'm grabbing and stepping on. Each hold is some variation of yellow — gold, chartreuse, chiffon, and pearl. My fingers and the tips of my shoes sink over edges crenellated by dense accumulations of prehistoric shells and rendered incut where time and weather have eroded the rock around them. 

I'm out of breath already, but soon come to a decent rest below the first peg, which I now see is even more antiquated and decayed than it had appeared from the ground. From here I veer left, where I'm relieved to find a succession of crozzly but sizeable crimps leading up to and around the second peg. Four metres from the top, I find my feet perched on two ornate, shell-like shards and hands clinging to a lath-like seam inlaid with the petrified remains of minute, primordial crustaceans. I linger, mesmerised by the sight of them, before a pang of encroaching pump forces me to move. Shortly before the top, on the steepest section of the climb, I stall again below a stretch of apparent nothingness. I've dithered too long below, and now feel my forearms protest the delay. Rather than sit back on the Shunt, I opt to pop for a maybe-something maybe-nothing I'd spotted while craning my neck to gain a better view of the rock above. 

The nothing's a something — a curved, incut rim that a quick finger shuffle later turns out to be a sinker jug. The pocket steers me into a step-through, following which my momentum carries me through a sequence of hold after perfectly placed hold before culminating with a gratuitous deadpoint to a fat, welcoming flake to finish. I pull onto the top of the block, smile the first smile I've smiled in months, and then rush back down to do it all again. 

I was smitten.

Over the next month, I returned to Limekilns three times per week. Each time I would arrive with intentions of climbing other climbs, but invariably found myself back on the route I'd discovered that first day: Grasp the Nettle. 

I'd rock up early, set up my static, and aim for 5, 10, 15, then eventually 20 laps as I regained health. I'd soon created 14 variations on the original — seven based on direction, seven that involved eliminating certain holds. I also named the line's features — The Cube, The Lollipop, The Toe Scoop, Polished Pocket, The Crinoid Crimp, The Coral Crossover — following an afternoon learning fossil identification on Google.

Spring gave way to summer. More climbers appeared by the day.

"That must be some route — you must've done it about fifteen times since we arrived," said one Edinburgh-based Cumbrian who arrived with a Canadian friend one morning.

I check the small pile of pebbles I've used those past few months to keep track of my progress.

"Twelve," I say. "Eight to go."

"Mind if we give it a go on your rope?"

I'd made my first friends in Scotland since leaving aged 19, and before long the Cumbrian-Canadian duo had introduced me to other climbers, all of whom were keen to try the route their new companion so fetishised.

I soon began climbing other climbs, leading everything I'd done on the Shunt and projecting a few harder routes. As much as I would've liked to lead Grasp the Nettle, the paucity of gear and decrepitude of the pegs nipped any nascent ambition in the bud — I was the paddle and any serious injury would leave my parents up the proverbial creek without me. As the warmer months approached, moreover, the crag was becoming busy, and I was too easily distracted, too self-conscious of my lumbering, lanky style and shoddy technique to climb remotely well in the presence of spectators.

One day, I arrived early with Rosa, an Edinburgh climber of Italian birth who'd relocated to Scotland as a kid. 

"What you doing today?" Rosa asks.

"I'll probably just do a few repeats of the oldies," I say.

Over the past weeks, I'd started to feel almost as fit as before my illness. Nevertheless, I'd stuck to my guns, working my way through every climb at the crag with "acceptable risk" — choosing them based on the available gear and how likely I was to fall — and nothing harder or sketchier. 

While we're gearing up, I notice traces of fresh chalk on Grasp the Nettle. Following their trail, I can see their bestower has done the Django Variation (Diretissima), the left-start-into-central-finish I'd first climbed while listening to Django Rheinhart's Minor Swing.

"Get on it," Rosa says, noticing my longing glare and perhaps sensing that my initial intrigue and tip of the hat had lapsed into envy and covetousness.

I don't answer.

"You're not going to come off," she continues. "You've done it a million times and haven't looked like coming off once. Besides, those pegs might hold if you did."

"Na, it's all good," I say, knowing I don't have the luxury of operating under the flimsy reassurance of modal verbs.

As she heads towards her warm-up on the west face, I hazard another look.

Then another.

"Okay," I say. "Bugger it."

Bugger it. Since returning, I hadn't done anything remotely exhilarating or risky, so I could, I reason, grant myself this one minor dereliction of care. Conditions, moreover, were perfect. And it was quiet. And, yes, the pegs might hold…

I set off after Rosa (who weighs 42 kilos to my 85) has tied herself onto a bag of gear and placing two jackets over a sharp rock in lieu of a boulder pad. In all the time I'd been here, I hadn't once thought to check the gear but, knowing there's little to be had, have equipped myself with a minimalist rack consisting of a few microwires and microcams and two draws for the pegs.

I place a psychological gear crumb in the hairline crack at three meters, then pull through the lower crux via the Polished Pocket and Crinoid Crimp. Below the first peg, I try to fiddle in a nut, then a microcam, but to no avail. As I'm returning the latter to my gear loop, I spot a handful of climbers approaching on the path. Shite. Soon, a bevvy of about 15 of them have accumulated on the fallen tree trunks below, all gazing upward and shouting encouragement between taking turns distracting my belayer.

I clip the first peg and, noticing the small flake of rust that detaches as I do so, remind myself that falling is not an option. I count out five deep breaths then head straight up, opting for the central variation and shortest path to the Hidden Hole. A few moves on, the noise below me has drowned out and I'm moving with automaton precision — thoughtless and, it seems, weightless. It feels like the recital of a favourite song — a dance, maybe — and soon, all too soon, I find myself clambering onto the grassy top.

Before I've even constructed my belay, the sadness hits me.

I clip my ropes through the anchor and retreat to the ledge to belay Rosa. One of the newly arrived climbers shouts up to congratulate me from the base of the crag.

"That looked class. How was it?"

Any answer I might give, I knew, would fall short of doing the route justice. I consider and disregard several all too banal and miserly-seeming superlatives before settling on:

"Probably the best climb within an hour of Lundin Links."

He turns to Rosa for clarification, gets none, then calls back up.

"Mind if I come up on one of your ropes?"

"Get on it!"

Within a few weeks I'd arranged a carer for my parents and would soon begin venturing further afield — Glencoe, Arrochar, the Cairngorms, the Northwest. Nevertheless, I've made an annual pilgrimage to Limekilns in the intervening years and each time look forward to getting back on Grasp the Nettle — for its quality, certainly, but also to give thanks and check in on an old friend. To this day, it remains the best E2 I've ever done, on a par with any pitch of that grade Val di Mello or elsewhere. 

One of my companions on these later adventures told me: "You never fail to learn something on every climb." I used to think life was about expanding my horizons, doing new things upon new things, but in those months at Limekilns I learned the value of getting to know something intimately rather than hopping from one thing to the other and barely scratching the surface — of choosing depth over range or quantity.

In the Age of Grasp the Nettle (circa 3 months, 40 sessions, and 500 laps) I'd gone from enervated hater of my lot to reluctant convert to the esoterica of Central Belt climbing, from friendless and downhearted to equipped with a dozen new climbing partners, enough stamina to tackle anything in Val di Mello upon my return, and a new-found gratitude for climbing's unfailing ability to deliver consolation, companionship, and improbable joy in the depths of hard times.

Add it to your UKC Wishlist: Grasp the Nettle (E2 5b)

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