In reply to BALD EAGLE:
Good stuff mate.
>I guess the Culm Coast is just a bit unfashionable nowadays…
It's just that bloody walk in! Saps the life out of me. Gently up...gently down...gently up....ad infinitum.
> So has anyone else out there got any fond memories of doing this crumbly classic or an epic tale of derring-do to tell?
Ah go on then- Climbed it a few times, great fun every time. Most recently in pitch dark after my partner suggested "just a walk on the beach with all our gear, we won't actually climb anything...".
For a real culm adventure, get on The Plank a few routes left of Wreckers. The loosest route I've ever been on, run out, huge chunks of rock peeling off the overhangs above you and exploding onto the slab. Excellent stuff. That was mainly in the dark come to think of it. I wrote the logbook entry for that, I can't recommend the extra belay enough!
Another option is Jolly Hell, somewhere between the two. 8 hours we spent putting that up, it was an absolute disaster. I started out into virgin territory from the 1st belay of Jolly Roger, heading up the right (instead of the left) of the slab. Huge run-outs on awful gear and holds that can you can take with you if you want. After creeping further and further upwards on pitch 2, with no sign of a good belay or even a good runner, I found myself stood on a tiny pedestal, in the pitch dark; my world reduced to a bubble of head torch light, 10m above a tied off lead placed peg, when I heard the chilling call; "you're out of rope". The only possible belay was a tiny seam that would only take knife blades. The only two we had were in the first belay. Unable to down climb the high slabby rockovers, not trusting a single runner in 60m of climbing and not willing to simul-climb on such friable rock, my only option was to call down for one of the ropes to be untied. My belayer dutifully obliged with only an "if you're sure" as protestation. I pulled the rope up, untied the other rope and joined them together. The only problem being that I now had 60m of slack which my belayer couldn't take in due to the joining knot, and I was unable to place any more gear as I wouldn't be able to belay properly...if I ever found one that is.
A quick calculation (read: guess) told me that if i fell, providing the tied off peg held, i would pull up about 10m from the ground, well below my belayer. Good enough, so onward I trembled, in my tiny world of LED warmth, balancing up an unfairly loose corner, rock cascading below me. Still no belay. After almost 60 more metres, and once again almost out of rope, I found myself pulling onto the ridge with difficulty. "If you fall here Dave, you'll fall 120 metres before you stop...if the peg holds. If it pops...brown bread mate. Shut up. Crack on". Finally, I topped out and threw the rope around a boulder the size of a car and yelled the happiest "SAFE" of my life.
Unfortunately, it was another 3 hours of stuck ropes and trying to shout 120m on a sea cliff (in the end, abbing half the climb and jugging back up was the only way to let my belayer know he could finally start climbing) before a friendly head torch came into view, and ambled up to the belay. I tried to stay cool and British "bloody hell, for a moment there I thought we were gonna miss last orders", but the sheer relief on my face betrayed me.
A good adventure? Yes. An epic? No; we still made the pub before closing!
The Culm coast; never a dull moment.