Pennine Lines w/c 24 February 2025

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28 Feb

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Back To The Beginning

It feels like we’re really turning the corner now from winter to spring. That’s not to say the grit conditions are on their way out by any means, in fact this time of year often yields some the best conditions - best in terms of easiest to actually make use of, with longer daylight hours, a fresh breeze, and no snow. But after a long, dark and cold winter where it often feels, for many of us, like we’ve been condemned to climb indoors more than we’d like, just getting out on rock again can just feel magnificent. Step out of the training lane, abandon the meticulous project science, leave the fans, ab ropes, ladders and fingerboards at home, pick a mainstream crag, and just go at it. Sometimes what the doctor orders is just simply a good old fashioned Full Day’s Climbing. Not a clinical project raid, but a full exhaustingly indiscriminate yet deliriously enjoyable day bouldering. No faff, just climb, and blow away the winter cobwebs.

It doesn’t hurt that such a full-day immersion in complete bouldering all-you-can-eat gluttony is reminiscent of the fabled “first day in Font” vibes of yore. Arriving in the Forest already dehydrated by 8 hours of driving, fuelled only by coffee, beaucoup pains au chocolate and what scant sleep you managed to scrape whilst lying on the floor of the lounge in a budget ferry whilst being stepped over by various chain-smoking continental lorry drivers, the stage is set for an epic day of climbing. With no concession made to saving any energy or skin, and - with smartphone weather forecasts still a full decade in the future - no way of knowing what the next few days will bring other than a half-remembered forecast, all bridges are burned on the first day. With elbows duly wrecked by locking between the chipped slots on the Cuvier red circuit, the hope is that those bridges can be at least partially reconstructed later that night by judicious use of fingertape, ibuprofen and antihydral. Rinse and repeat for seven consecutive days. Bon chance.

Why are thoughts of your earliest trips to Fontainebleau always so evocative? The scent of the forest or your crag bag being full of sand at the end of the trip, or the generous daily Viennoiserie ration can only explain so much. More likely it’s the bewildering complexity and density of the climbing unrolling before you, a lifetime of possibilities overwhelming you, like a beginner first discovering the world of climbing once again. No matter how experienced you are, the moment you set foot in the Forest for the first time you are a novice, realising you could visit here every year - as many times as you can - for the rest of your life, and never run out of things to do.

Le Flipper, 91.1 || Climber: Will Napper

Maybe this is why dropping your grade and gorging yourself on a densely-packed crag like, say, Almscliff, on a day of sub-optimal conditions, and emptying the tank is such a worthwhile pursuit every now and again. Embody that first-day-in-Font energy again. Granted, the ambience is different; you’re trudging through soft mud instead of soft sand, and you’re likely to see red kites not wild boar, but it’s not that different to Cuvier. We got polish - check. We got chipped slots - check. We got older blokes with strong regional accents to burn you off - check.

Venue aside, having staggering back to the car, parched and hungry, hoping there’s a bit of liquid left in that water bottle wedged into the door pocket, you can be sure at work on Monday you’re the only one who can feel every curve of the letters on their computer keyboard. Despite each one being only a single layer of paint thick, through wafer-thin tips the letters feel cruel and harsh to the touch. Nobody else in the office will be wincing each time they grab a lukewarm mug of tea, either. Well, it’s their loss.