We did an integral route of Charity, HTW, Upper Staircase, Abraham's Crack and Senior's Ridge

... wearing mountain boots and sacks as training for forthcoming Norwegian trip.

Hello Gordon,
Was it really VS - 5a in 1969 ? In my day it was Hard Severe and certainly a challenge.
Scotty Dwyer fell off it guiding on about his sixtieth ascent, went back up and completed it but never did the climb again.
It reminds me of Barry Brewster who used to say that the graded list of climbs should be : HS, VS, HVS, Extreme and "Ogwen Hard Severe" !
Regards,
Boje
PS - Obviously I am browsing through your gallery, which is excellent, so I thought I would add a few comments.

Well, no, technical grades didn't exist then. The delightful Tony Moulam 'Cwm Idwal' guidebook we were using then said:
'Original Route. 130 feet. Very Severe. A fine rock-climb, that of the Wall. Generally ledges are small and the exposure of the route therefore may seem high, but the technicalities are not great. Even the first pitch depends rather on a trick.'
Those were the days when they knew how to write guidebooks ;)

Just to clarify further. Our Moulam 'Cwm Idwal' guide dated from 1964, and it was graded Very Severe then. Indeed, I thought one of the historical points about it was that it was a very early and remarkable VS dating from 1918. In 1969 the crux move on the first pitch was widely regarded as 5a, and all subsequent guidebooks have confirmed that.