The Blind Man of Hoy Read online

  Enjoy,

  Cole

  I doubt if anything acts as a sharper spur to weight loss than having to do repeated pull-ups. You curse every ounce as your shaking arms shriek acidulously for mercy and your curled digits threaten to slough off their covering of skin for the relief of letting go the bar above your head. If I’d questioned the wisdom of abstinence beforehand, within two days of starting this boot camp torture I was thanking my stars (and my wife) for the short period of clean living I’d enjoyed in preparation.

  Sometimes hard work is its own reward. By the end of January I had lost a stone, taking me two-thirds of the way to my target of being 10½ stone (66.6 kg), which I considered the ideal climbing weight for my 175 cm height. I felt more agile, clearer headed and my knees hurt less as I carted laundry, kid’s toys and the hoover round the house; and, as Cole had predicted, Kate had noticed the difference.

  I still had a long way to go. On a snowy morning in the first week of February Cole met me at the West One wall in Marylebone and, over the course of 90 of the most exhausting minutes I have ever experienced, gave me a masterclass in some of the finer arts of climbing including: flagging – offsetting your weight on one side by extending the opposite one at such an angle that it acts as a counterweight allowing you to stretch further for a handhold; rock-overs – using the same technique to transfer all your weight onto one raised knee then rising up to stand on that leg to bring you to an otherwise unreachable handhold; and locking off – holding oneself in place on the wall with one, or both, arms locked in a bent position, which is very, very tough for more than a few seconds no matter how much weight you’ve lost. I told myself the cab home was simply a reaction to the icy pavements but only my aching limbs stopped me from falling asleep in the back.

  During a long soak in the bath I resolved to keep up with the training and supplement it with the Tae Kwon Do-like balance moves Cole had shown me.

  The problem was my feet. Somehow I just wasn’t using them as they’d been intended because I found balancing on one leg nearly impossible and relying on them rather than my arms when climbing, counter-intuitive.

  I went looking on the Internet for confirmation that I wasn’t the only one and came across Andy Coltart’s name. He helps train the British Paraclimbing Squad and in the course of a friendly and highly informative phone-call told me that his visually impaired climbers climb down every wall they ascend as part of their training. This advice was pure gold.

  7

  Al Alvarez

  ‘Live it up, fill your cup, drown your sorrow

  And sow your wild oats while ye may

  For the toothless old tykes of tomorrow

  Were the Tigers of yesterday.’

  – from The Last of the Grand Old Masters

  by Tom Patey

  I can’t remember exactly when I first read Feeding the Rat, but remember the effect it had on me. Here in Al Alvarez was an author and climber who ‘got it’ – who recognised that some of us only feel truly alive when clinging to a flake of rock at what others regard as a suicidal distance from the ground.

  The book’s protagonist, Alvarez’s sometime climbing partner and friend Mo Anthoine, climbed with all the mountaineers I had come to revere. Content to allow characters like Bonington, Boardman, Whillans and Estcourt to occupy the limelight he was the unsung hero of dozens of epics – an Everyman I could relate to.

  Like the fictional heroes of the classic adventure and crime stories I also loved, Anthoine was no death-or-glory merchant; rather he climbed because something gnawing inside drove him to the limits of human endurance; a rat he had to feed.

  I have a hazy memory of discussing the book at University with Matt Estcourt, son of the legendary Nick, one stoned-out night in his room, listening to Dark Side of The Moon, watched over by a photograph of his long-dead father.

  I’d dug my battered first edition out again after that initial conversation with Trevor about the Old Man. He had advised me to go away and reread Alvarez’s enthralling account of his own conquest of the stack and then added with casual wistfulness.

  ‘Nice bloke Al Alvarez.’

  ‘What, you know him?’ I asked, flabbergasted.

  ‘Yeah, I used to see him around quite a bit, back when I was swimming up at Highgate Ponds, he was a regular – every day. He was a decent climber too, till he shattered his ankle in a fall. Yeah, nice bloke; always had time to stop for a chat.’

  With the prospect of climbing the Old Man myself looming large on the horizon I reread his account yet again and determined to find out, from the horse’s mouth, exactly what I was letting myself in for.

  Knowing that my friend and neighbour Piers Plowright is also an avid outdoor swimmer and frequenter of the Ponds, I’d sought confirmation and was told yes, not only was Al a committed Pond Dipper but also that he lives in the next street!

  Piers has the gift of performing effortless introductions between his friends – his confidence that they will find common interest issues an instant bond that he discreetly tops up as conversation develops. He had promised he’d give Al and Ann a call to arrange a time when we could get together for a cup of tea.

  However, even Piers cannot orchestrate the iniquities of health, house-moves and British winter and our attempts had been thwarted so that it was mid-February before we met, and then only briefly at the launch of Al’s new book, Pondlife – A Swimmer’s Journal.

  In the meantime, small world that North West London is, Matthew too had become a Pond Dipper and joined the ranks of the East German Ladies Swimming Team (EGLST) whose website justifies their existence better than I ever could:

  Inspired by lifelong Highgate Pond Swimmer Al Alvarez (celebrated poet, author, mountain-climber, poker player, and gentleman), a couple of middle-aged Northwest London professionals started swimming in the Highgate Men’s Pond in September 2011. As the days started getting colder, friends, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends started joining the weekend swims in theincreasingly-glacial waters.Because the weekly training is carried out in the Highgate Men’s Pond, the all-male team decided to honour the most masculine swimming team it could think of: the 1976 East German Ladies Swimming Team, the vanquisher of all opponents at the Summer Olympic Games in Montreal.

  These all-weather warriors were out in force amid the crowd thronging the launch at Daunt Books. Piers and Matthew were both there and I was able to perform an introduction of my own and enjoy their animated conversation, before I was whisked off to meet first Ann and then Al himself.

  Unfortunately in the excitement no one had told me that Al was in a wheelchair and when we were introduced, the handshake I offered to his face was greeted with a testiness that I recognised from my own reaction to people who fail to notice my white stick. My sense of faux pas was compounded when a couple of members of the EGLST, hearing that I too had written a book, promptly bought copies and asked me to sign them.

  Despite all this Ann Alvarez, Piers and I agreed that another attempt to meet should be pencilled in for the following week.

  Piers was running late and had rung to tell me to go ahead. Frozen slush clung obstinately to the pavement as I slithered the 150 metres from my house to the Alvarez’s and wished I had better walking boots than my gripless urban lookalikes.

  Over the years I’ve become accustomed to injury. Regular jarring cranial contact with street furniture, missed kerbstones, potholes and carelessly abandoned objects on the pavement all make for bruising and sometimes bloody collisions that I have learned to shrug off and treat with a ready supply of painkillers and arnica. So why was I so worried about an accident now?

  Maybe I was feeling sensitive because of the constant ache in my arms and across my shoulders from all the strengthening work. But it was more than that. A new caution had crept into me. I shuffled on.

  Ann ushered me through to the sitting room-cum-study at the rear of the house, explaining Al was pretty much confined to the ground floor nowadays. She reintroduced us, gently r
eminding Al of why I’d come.

  Neither his voice nor handshake betrayed a hint of infirmity.

  ‘You must be fucking mad!’ he rasped. ‘The Old Man’s difficult enough when you can see! What the hell makes you want to do it?’

  ‘Feeding the rat.’ I slid the well-thumbed copy over the table to him. ‘Your fault, I’m afraid. You made it sound so . . . compelling.’

  He grunted.

  ‘Well most of it looks pretty straightforward,’ I said defensively. ‘I’ve watched a couple of ascents on TV and I’ve tried to get access to a copy of The Big Climb through the BFI and by writing to Chris Bonington.’

  ‘If he’s got one expect a bill with it’ was his reaction to that.

  ‘That big overhang sounds pretty full-on and I’d like to get any information I can before coming face to face with it. Any hints?’

  He grunted mirthlessly. ‘The Coffin; it’s well-named.’

  ‘It’s that bad is it?’

  ‘It’s no Sunday picnic. There’s nothing too technical about it but there are no good holds. It’s a bastard, and that’s if you can see what you’re doing. Good luck to you!’

  It was meant kindly but his gruff delivery and frank amazement at what I was proposing to do was not encouraging.

  ‘Yeah, well you were nearly 60 when you did it. I’ve got a few years advantage on you. Maybe that evens the odds,’ I blurted, before feeling myself redden. The man hadn’t been well enough to swim for months now and had made no secret of his frustration at the book launch. Here I was asking him to recall another outdoor passion denied him by his failing body, then getting tetchy when he, quite naturally, pointed out the difficulties my physical limitations may present

  He gave a quick, grim laugh. ‘I hope you’re bloody fit. You’ll need to be.’

  ‘Doing a bit more than Egyptian PT anyway’ I quipped, making reference to Mo Anthoine’s assessment of Al’s two weeks lazing in Tuscany before their ascent.

  This produced a hearty guffaw that blew much of the tension from the room. ‘To be honest with you it’s all so long ago I don’t remember much about it, other than relief at getting to the top.’

  In the few seconds wistful silence that followed I heard his fingers play across the cover of Feeding the Rat lying between us.

  You don’t need to see to know a room is lined with books. Hundreds of thousands of densely packed pages of poetry and prose speak for themselves both in aroma and the sense of insulation they give. Al sat at the centre of this repository of his intellect, experience and achievement, secure in the knowledge that it was all there. If he chose to leave it on the shelf for others to find, because fetching it down made him feel careworn, that was his privilege – a writer’s work doesn’t lose its power just because the binding’s come loose.

  Maybe too he was trying to avoid giving me a bum steer like the one he’d felt he received from Bonington’s failure to mention a second chimney on the crux pitch in his written account of The Big Climb. I decided not to push him further but exit gracefully.

  ‘Well, your vivid description of hanging upside down on the abseil will ensure I check my harness is tight before I descend!’

  Again that grim laugh, ‘Yes, that was fucking scary . . .’ he seemed on the point of elaborating when Piers entered the room, rather breathless and full of apology.

  The two men had a lot to catch up on and quickly fell into step on familiar ground; book reviews, local news, poetry; nothing that excluded me, far from it, but it left me feeling as if I’d got to base camp only to be kept there by a discussion about the weather.

  ‘Are Kate and the girls going to come and watch you climb?’ It was one of several efforts Piers had made to steer conversation back to the Old Man of Hoy.

  I laughed, ‘No, I think they’ll just be happy to receive confirmation that I’m down safely.’

  ‘Ann’s happier now I’m grounded’ Al growled and the conversation turned to wives and children and thence to the passage of time and the relative merits of beauty and charm. At the mention of the word both men sighed and in unison quoted Yeats on Memory: -

  ‘One had a lovely face

  And two or three had charm,

  But charm and face are in vain

  Because the mountain grass

  Cannot but keep the form

  Where the mountain hare hath lain.’

  Somehow my copy of Feeding the Rat got muddled with one of Pondlife that Piers had brought. Amid apologies that this was one of the increasingly numerous days where he couldn’t feel his fingers Al’s painful, shaky dedication ‘To Red, good luck on the climb, Al’ ended up on the wrong flyleaf. Piers and I kept this to ourselves as Al slumped back in his chair, oblivious but clearly pissed off with his body’s failure to obey the simplest of demands.

  With the clock striking six, Ann appeared and offered us all a gin and tonic. Tempted though I was (my abstinence had not progressed into February) I made my excuses and left.

  The preceding hour and a quarter had left me with a sharp sense of the short period of time we have to achieve our physical dreams. If on the way home I slipped and fell and broke something I’d lose a year. Twelve months hence what little sight I had would be even less and that which appeared madness to Al now would only become more difficult to achieve.

  My future, like Al’s present, promised decreasing mobility and while I still could I wanted to go out and grab some stories to furnish my own library in preparation for the dark housebound days that lay ahead.

  8

  The Cole Styron Workout – Part 2

  ‘It’s going to pump your arms like bloated sausages’

  – climber, Anthony Burgess

  Hi fellas,

  Climbing:

  Climb! As much as you can. Do endurance sessions where you try to maximise the amount of vertical metres you are climbing regardless of the grade. Do traversing sessions where you see if you can keep your feet off the ground for an hour. Reinhold Messner used to train by going around his stone barn in the Sudtirol until his grip failed. That’s the sort of thing we’re after.

  We’re still going to be alternating between the climbing and antagonist muscle groups, however we’ll simplify the antagonist stuff a bit. Essentially, for antagonist days, just do your max numbers of crunches and at least 200 press-ups. Try to get the press-ups in as few sets as possible, i.e. it’s better to do 4 x 50 than 10 x 20. In addition to that, I’d like you to start adding in lower back extensions. Essentially these involve standing up straight, feet shoulder width apart or slightly wider, hands on head, elbows out to the sides. Bend forward at the waist keeping your back as straight as possible until you are bent 90 degrees and your torso is parallel to the floor. Start with 3x10 sets, but if you find these easy, gradually start adding weight to your hands in the form of single freeweight or a medicine ball or the poor man’s version: the gallon jug of water.

  Climbing muscle group exercises:

  People will tell you that pull-ups don’t make the climber and to a degree they’re right. However, people live and die by silly mantras all the time, so we’re going to ignore them. Overhanging terrain requires good upper body strength; that’s all there is to it.

  Pull-ups: after warming up, do five sets of your max with 7 minutes rest between. Keep a record of your progress here. If after any three-week period you’ve shown no improvement, congratulations! That’s actually the plateau we’re looking for.

  After your pull-ups, do a series of lock offs to failure. The first set will be 3x30 degrees. On the second and third pull-up days per week do 3x90 and 3x120 degrees respectively.

  In addition to pull-up exercises, when climbing at Swiss Cottage it’s probably time to start looking at fingerboard sessions if your tendons allow. I’ll need to show you how to do that in person as it’s tough to explain. When are you next in at Swiss?

  Thanks,

  Cole Styron

  9

  Crack Team

  ‘There are two
things that are more difficult than making an after dinner speech; climbing a wall that is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you’

  – Winston Churchill

  Andres had been enthusing about the indoor wall at Brunel for weeks.

  ‘Guys, you’ve so got to come with me and give it a go; it’s just so cool. It’s like someone’s cut a big slab of limestone from the Peak District or somewhere and transported it down the campus and built a sport hall around it. There are cracks and ledges and a chimney and an overhang and this bouldering room that’s really cool also. And it’s sooo warm there because it’s all indoors. And there’s the student bar also where the beer’s really cheap for afterwards.’

  Standing in the semi-shelter of the glass canopy at Swiss, the rain dribbling down the fibreglass walls and our breath condensing in front of us, this didn’t sound like a bad idea. Brunel was only 50 minutes away up the Met Line, and Cole had been insistent that Matthew and I needed practice on the horizontal and vertical cracks that are such a feature of sandstone and many other rock types. In the absence of outdoor routes, courtesy of one of the wettest winters on record, an indoor facsimile, especially one with beer, seemed a good alternative.

  I could tell Matthew was as excited as I when we met at Finchley Road tube station for the first of our three visits. The photos Andres had taken made it look like quite a crag (actually the small figures on the wall proved to be a party of kids!).

  We chatted happily about the search for someone to sort the logistics and guide us up the Old Man. Here again Matthew’s expertise in research was proving invaluable, the visual strain of trawling for names would have put me right off. Matthew also suggested that I seek sponsorship and/or raise money for charity; neither of which I was keen to embark on until I was sure I stood at least a chance of getting up the stack.