The Mad Month of Agust

We where back in our field of Morvah for August, loads of people came to see us. Pete & Ingrid (from the Lakes), Gregor Colet Abby Leighsah (Devon), Tori Bobby Teigan Jasmine (Bodmin), Robson (the Lizard), Shaun & Jules (Skemsdale), Dolph (Bude) and of course Smudge (Camelford). Good times. Loads of stuff happened, loads of stuff was climbed and of course drunk.

Hannah is still running around destroying every VS in the south west, in fact anyone would have thought she was preparing for an assessment not training.

My personal favourite time was spending time with Shaun. The best thing about Shaun is you can always talk him into an epic. So when I suggested doing a few routes from the 1950 W A Andrews guide he was up for it.

Andrews was famous for many a thing, especially his idea of traversing the coast around the high and low tide mark. So we tried.

We descended down commando ridge and started. First was a funny little stride across a narrow zawn, followed by two small abseils and we where in Great Zawn.

Do the jump? Not likely, climb round yeah right it was all sopping wet, last solution? Swim.

There where a lot of people in the zawn that day, I can only imagine how ridiculous it must have looked seeing two pastey white northerners squealing and laughing as we swam out of this bastion of Cornish climbing. When I say swim it is in the loosest sense of the word, Sean went first with the rope, then we got the bag across, I held the end of the rope jumped and was pulled through the water.

We then cept traversing passing some of the most beutefull zawns, walls and bouldering till we came to Brandy Zawn. No amount of rope trickery was going to get us round this, it would have to be another swim.

This was a kind of exploratory trip, so rather than swim again we should try escape in the general direction of Rosemergy Ridge. This we did Sean lead off up 80 degree grass and general tottering junk till we met the ridge.

Once the ridge had been done we set of in a southerly direction towards another ridge and climbed this. Once on the top we where surrounded by a world of thorns bramble and general scratchy madness, some would say a hole world of pain.

Would this stop the two intrepid explorers? Not a chance of we went laughing and joking about snakes, shouting Hello Bears to scare them of. This only increased our own paranoia.

After 20 minutes we found a little oasis of grass had a sit down drank the last of our water smoke some fags then back to it. The thorns where about waist height and pain full then stumbled across and old mine shaft, error, we retraced our steps to the oasis.

Once sitting down again I noticed Sean’s leg was bleeding a lot. On closer inspection realized he had been bitten by a snake. Oh shit, no phone’s, no one new where we where, what the f##k are we gonna do.

“Right Sean you go first if you pass out I will legit to get help” Choice words when all seams bleak. Thing is it worked I just kept pushing him on. We found the coast path, we then found the road, an hour later we where safely back on the camp site. Mission complete.
Hospital? No likely. Gave him some piriton and washed it down with lashings of ale Treat.

About two weeks later I did complete the traverse from Bosigran to Pendeen in about 4 hour’s as a solo trip the thought of our epic escape inspired me to just keep going so I did.

Job done. Cheers Sean.