The Old Man of Hoy - August 2008

On the last weekend of August, Mark and I each took time off either side of the normal weekend to do this trip, one which takes a fair amount of logistical planning. The Old Man is a sea-stack on Hoy, one of the Orkney islands just north of the Scottish mainland. I won't go into the whole history of it, one can easily google it and find a wealth of information, but two interesting points of trivia are that 1) as recently as the 1800s it had an arched base, with two legs, one of which collapsed and formed the land bridge by which it is now accessed, and 2) the stack is expected to collapse pretty much at any time, a rather sobering thought when you're actually on the thing.
It is also one of the most famous climbs in Britain, and one which every British climber aspires to climb at some point in their career. And as my friend Keith Scott remarked upon hearing we'd climbed it: "Well it's good you got to do it while it's still 140m high, not 140m long!"

It's quite an experience just getting there. We flew from Belfast to Inverness in a puddle-jumper.

We hired a car and drove up to Scrabster (the port of Thurso) on the north coast of Scotland. From here you can easily see across to Hoy, which is the closest of the Orkney islands to the mainland. The top of the Old Man can be seen sticking up behind the low headland on the left (west) side of the island.

There are no ferries direct to Hoy, however. We made a crossing that night to Stromness on the Orkey "mainland" (the biggest chain of islands in the middle of the achipelago, interconnected by causeway roads). On this crossing, you sail right past the Old Man, and get a very good view of it, although the standard route up it is on the landward facing (east) side.

Shortly after the Old Man, you can see St John's Head, the highest sea cliffs in Britain. There are routes up here too, and some real epic ascents have been made.

We camped that night in Stromness, next to the golf course. When I woke up the next morning, Mark was lying in his sleeping bag about 50m from the tent. I snore, apparently, and Mark is far too much of a gentleman to just kick me in the ribs. In my defence I did have a cold at the time.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather on this trip. As you can see from the photos above, the day before the climb was dry, enabling the rock on the stack to dry out, and this was the view of the entrance to Scapa Flow, the next morning (the day of the climb).

The good weather was a huge relief after all the planning that went into this trip; flights, car hire, ferries, campsites, checking timetables to match up the various journeys involved.
The next step was to take another (much smaller) ferry across to Hoy, a journey of only half an hour or so.

From the tiny port of Lyness on Hoy, it's a twenty minute drive over to Rackwick Bay, from where you walk up over a headland to get to the Old Man.

A descent of a very steep, long, vegetated slope, which was hard enough in the dry, but must be an absolute nightmare in the wet, brings you to the boulder field that forms a land bridge across to the Old Man. A short scramble across this and you're there. It's advisable to put a helmet on straight away, particularly if there are other climbers above you.

The route we took is the one most people do, and is the easiest route on the stack. It's the original east face route, and involves mostly easy climbing except the second (crux) pitch, which is E1 5b, and the last pitch is solid VS up a beautiful corner. Mark led these two pitches, I led the easy first pitch, and the two rather rambly ones in between the crux and the last pitch. I managed to forget the camera on the climb itself, and only realised at the top of the first pitch, which neither of us was inclined to downclimb. Btw a good site to look at for climbs on the Old Man is this one.
Well we had the full experience. We started climbing at 1pm. The rock is sandstone, and is actually not bad quality, but it is very sandy, which again is reason to be thankful that it was very dry. I would imagine it to turn into vertical mud when wet. The crux was way to hard for me in my decrepid state, but there are so many pieces of old tat all over the place that I made liberal use of. At the top of the crux the stance is quite tiny, and we had to cope with a group of five climbers who were busy with their descent. Then when I was leading the next pitch (I set off up it in a bit of a hurry to get out of the abseling climber's way) I came across one of these charming birds. That one sentence in the second paragraph there; "Nesting birds and chicks can eject an evil smelling stomach oil up to 2 m, which repels unwanted visitors" tells you everything you need to know. Mindful that this was really his territory, not mine, I climbed past him as fast as I could, but not fast enough! I got a good few gobs of the stuff on the side of my face, all over my helmet, and my side. Clothes stank for days after, in fact even now when I put on that beige fleece I still get a whiff of it. He must have used it all up on me, because when Mark came up the bird was just dry-heaving at him.

There were others higher up, but fortunately the nature of the route at those points is that you can pick a different way up if you choose to do so. The last pitch is a corker, a beautiful VS grade corner and we were on top by 5pm. It was very windy on the summit, and we didn't stay long to savour it, as we still had to get down! Three long abseils, the last one a full 60m from the top of the second pitch to the ground, and we were down by 6pm.

We were both pretty shattered, me much more so than Mark (as usual) and the walk back up the steep slope to the top of the headland was torturous, although I did get this rather nice photo.

We also got to see the Stromness ferry (the same one we had taken the night before) on its way past.

That night we camped in the grounds of the bothy at Rackwick Bay, and it rained so hard that neither of us slept a wink with the noise of the rain on the tent (the bothy itself was occupied). At least it wasn't my snoring that kept Mark awake that night! So we had a perfect weather window for the climb.

The next day was spent driving around the Orkney mainland, visiting various tourist sites. We were both dropping off to sleep the whole time, due to our exertions the previous day, as well as the night of no sleep. We took the late ferry back to Thurso, and camped there, returning to Inverness the next day for our flight back to Belfast.

This was a fantastic, once in a lifetime trip, and a dream come true for Mark, who has wanted to climb it ever since he first heard of it.

A splash of '08

The summer of 2008 was also pretty wet. but far better than '07. We were able to get out quite a lot. In May, I took the kids camping one weekend in the Mournes. The weather was beautiful and we went for a walk on the Sunday morning.

Climbing wise, well it was a mixed bag. For me, some climbs went really well, others felt like disasters. On some routes I really felt like I was back into it, only to really struggle on some easy route the following week. I came really close to giving it up altogether.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the year was our ascent of the Old Man of Hoy in the Orkney Islands in August. But that needs a post of its own to do it justice. The best thing about the climbing for me in '08 was visiting new areas, including Lough Belshade in the Bluestack Mountains in Donegal. It's one of the most beautiful crags I've ever been to, and as you're climbing you can hear the water lapping against the shore of the lough; very tranquil. Well worth the rather long walk-in.

We also went to Muckross Head, near Killybegs in Donegal. This is perhaps the closest thing the northern counties have to a sport climbing crag, as the climbing is five minutes from the car, and the routes are short so you can do a few in a day.

Another lovely climb was Quartz Gully at Glendalough. The crux pitch is a real corker!

I also took the kids to the Isle of Man in August; I've always wanted to go there and Nadia was due some off time after a long summer school holiday.
The boat trip over was very rough; Lara was quite sick, Jonathan and I were also quite green towards the end; only Nicholas seems to have great sea-legs! It was tough to be away with them on my own for four days, but I survived anyhow. The weather wasn't great, but the boys nevertheless took every opportunity they could to swim!

New Zealand - April 2008

In April 2008 I went out to New Zealand for my brother's 40th birthday. Paul and Heather live in Little River, on the Bank's Peninsula about 60km from Christchurch. They live on a smallholding, and keep cows, sheep, donkeys and chickens, and grow their own vegetables. With all those animals, it helps that Paul is the local vet. They also have two children, Daniel (13) and Rebecca (9). After a couple of years living in the existing house, too small for them all, they built a new one.

I was able to stay in luxury on my own in the smaller cottage.

The view down from the house, towards the sea. The name of the lake escapes me right now.

I accompanied Paul on some of his work rounds , including the castration of these alpacas.

Took a boat trip out from Akaroa, on a beautiful day.

Paul and I walked up Mount Herbert, from Diamond Harbour, and came down on the Little River side.

Then there was the birthday party, with its "mid-life crisis" theme. I dyed my hair blonde for the occasion (photo's not provided!).

A fantastic time, and good to see the old bugger after three years.

A smidgeon of '07

You wouldn't think from looking at any of these photos that we had one of the wettest summers, like, ever, in 2007. But we did have a glorious April, which is when most of these were taken.

My first time back climbing after my accident was to Slieve Bearnagh in the Mournes. Mark took me up Grand Central, the easiest line up the Bearnagh slabs. My wrist felt awkward, and was still quite skew, something that's been corrected a bit since. But it was so good just to be back climbing again.

My first lead since the accident was "Paradise Lost" at Dalkey Quarry. It's a beautiful, easy line on good quality rock.

I also led "Eliminate A". a route that looks crap from below, but it's a five star line too, one of the best routes I've ever done of that grade.

I found with leading that I was very tentative, not really trusting anything, including myself. I realised it was going to take some time to feel comfortable again, but I haven't regained the confidence I had before, even now in 2009.

One of the other highlights of 2007 was climbing "Tarquin's Groove" on Bingorm West in Donegal. It was a blistering day, so much so that we had a swim in the lake near which we had parked the car when we got down.

I got sun-burnt for the first and only time (so far) in Ireland.

In June the rain started, and didn't really stop until September. But we did manage one particular afternoon in July, to get up to Fairhead, with Pieter, who had finally come over for the weekend we were supposed to have the year before. If only the weather had been as good. But we were able to climb that Saturday afternoon, after a morning doing the tourist thing at the rope bridge and the Giant's Causeway. I bailed after the first pitch of "Taoiseach", and went to take photos of Pieter and Mark completing the route. A lead attempt two weeks later on "Chieftain" next door was similarly ignominious, I had to use aid and thrutch my way up the thing.

Pieter also led "The Black Thief" on the Prow.

Um, that was sort of it for '07.