The route
Few hikers on Cornwall's Pentire Point coast path, gazing out across the Atlantic, are aware of the Great Wall beneath their feet. The cliff's summit is an unexceptional grassy bump, a few metres below the path. You have to scramble steeply down to the shoreline to appreciate the cliff, which abruptly reveals itself as a huge sweep of near-vertical blank rock crowned by steep angular corners, about 100m high in total.
For me, the Great Wall, generally just referred to as "Pentire" by climbers, may be the best cliff in the UK, in the sense of distilling all the unique aspects of British climbing into a single compact package:
Some British climbers will scowl and mutter "Gogarth" in response to this, but when I was last there - admittedly a very long time ago - that sprawling Welsh seacliff was a clear fail on the fourth criteria.
Pentire's main limitation is that there are not many routes. When I first visited in the mid-1980s there were only two, both established in the 1970s by Pat Littlejohn, the great pioneer of South-West English climbing. Eroica follows the only continuous crack line on the cliff while the brilliant Darkinbad the Brightdayler wanders across the huge blank face to the right, finding subtle areas of weakness. In 1987, Bristol climber Steve Monks added Black Magic, taking a more direct up the tallest part of the blank face via a 50m long first pitch. Black Magic is rated E5, with consensus at the high end of the grade and some thinking it deserves E6. In YDS, maybe 5.11d X?
The context
In the spring of 1992 I resolved to give up computer programming work, focus on my (part-time) MBA course and not work again until I could score a finance job. The actual effect of this was unemployment for most of the year, as the banks and investment firms that I pestered with job applications universally spurned me. On the positive side, this meant great swathes of climbing time. Additionally I was single so not subject to many constraints at all. Except lack of money which became more of a concern as the rejection letters piled up.
My most frequent climbing partner at that time was Dan Donovan, also London-based and also under-employed. Dan would go on to greatly surpass me as a climber, notably in the boldness/ adventure dimension, but in 1992 we were still at a similar level and shared many climbing objectives. We were especially keen on climbing in the South West, possibly because of new guidebooks to the area but possibly also because it was the one place in the UK that London climbers weren't disadvantaged in reaching, relative to climbers from further north; in other words, it was a long drive for everyone.
Dan owned three puffin stuffies (intended for juggling?) that accompanied him everywhere. I had recently acquired a camera, after many years of mostly-undocumented climbing, but regrettably in 1992 took few pictures of people on rocks and rather too many of his puffins in staged poses - a sort of proto-meme that seemed funny at the time.
In May we spent a three day weekend in the South-West, moving between three different venues from the western tip of Cornwall to the North Devon coast. The diary records proudly that the trip was "Totally awesome" and that we accumulated "36 E points !!!". E points being a bragging system based on notional points awarded for the grade of the routes climbed, one for E1, two for E2, etc.
On the Saturday we had climbed the West Face, Dream/ Liberator and Desolation Row in Bosigran's atmospheric Great Zawn, then the more obscure Burning Gold at Carn Les Boel. I had never done so many "hard" pitches in a day. Confidence levels were high.
On Sunday we were at Pentire. There were no other climbers. I had led Darkinbad before, with Noel the previous year, so it was Dan's turn to try it. To my quiet satisfaction he fell once - from the only safe part of the route, a short finger-crack. This raised the question of what to do next. We had a new guidebook that listed Black Magic, but had little information except that many "RP"s (small wired brass nuts) were needed. Moreover we had not heard of an ascent by anyone we knew. On the blunt end of the rope my second time up Darkinbad had felt easy and the little crimp edges that littered the face welcoming. Black Magic crossed the same kind of terrain. It seemed reasonable to have a go.
The ascent
I don't remember much about climbing Black Magic. The diary states "a real E5 ... lots harder than Darkinbad" and "ultra-scary" but I don't recall overwhelming fear at the time, more a constant unease. I do remember that the pitch felt very long and that I placed many RP's, but that most of them seemed cosmetic. I also remember pausing at a tenuous rock-up on a small lichenous edge near the end of the pitch and thinking "must absolutely not fall here".
The significance of leading Black Magic became more apparent a few years later. Some time in the mid-1990s my friend Duncan Critchley belayed a rising star amongst London climbers, Alison (by coincidence, the only person I know to have been born on the same day as me) on the first pitch of Black Magic. She slipped near the top, ripping out most of her gear in the fall and ending up close to the giant boulders at the base of the wall. Impacts during her fall badly damaged her ankle, which eventually had to be fused. There is no doubt that I would not have gone near the route had this happened before my ascent.
Even without that future insight, 1992 marked the peak of my not-very-ambitious onsight trad career and I have never again (intentionally) climbed anything as serious as Black Magic. I don't think that was an especially conscious decision, more that my interest in sport climbing began to crowd out everything else and I got out of the habit of bold climbing, which - like most things - benefits from practise.
Subsequent ascents
I have not been back to Pentire but I have spent significantly more time on the Atlantic coast of Devon and Cornwall, sometimes just in tourist mode. I took Shoko to Bosigran, St Ives and Tintagel, a few km north-east of Pentire, on her first visit to the UK in September 1992, and we got married in Crackington Haven, a little further up the coast in 1998.
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| Climber about halfway up the big pitch of Black Magic, which ends below the obvious skyline corners © Grant Farquhar |
Few hikers on Cornwall's Pentire Point coast path, gazing out across the Atlantic, are aware of the Great Wall beneath their feet. The cliff's summit is an unexceptional grassy bump, a few metres below the path. You have to scramble steeply down to the shoreline to appreciate the cliff, which abruptly reveals itself as a huge sweep of near-vertical blank rock crowned by steep angular corners, about 100m high in total.
For me, the Great Wall, generally just referred to as "Pentire" by climbers, may be the best cliff in the UK, in the sense of distilling all the unique aspects of British climbing into a single compact package:
- By the sea.
- Melancholic celtic vibe.
- Lonely runout face climbing.
- Decent pubs and cream tea shops nearby.
Some British climbers will scowl and mutter "Gogarth" in response to this, but when I was last there - admittedly a very long time ago - that sprawling Welsh seacliff was a clear fail on the fourth criteria.
Pentire's main limitation is that there are not many routes. When I first visited in the mid-1980s there were only two, both established in the 1970s by Pat Littlejohn, the great pioneer of South-West English climbing. Eroica follows the only continuous crack line on the cliff while the brilliant Darkinbad the Brightdayler wanders across the huge blank face to the right, finding subtle areas of weakness. In 1987, Bristol climber Steve Monks added Black Magic, taking a more direct up the tallest part of the blank face via a 50m long first pitch. Black Magic is rated E5, with consensus at the high end of the grade and some thinking it deserves E6. In YDS, maybe 5.11d X?
The context
In the spring of 1992 I resolved to give up computer programming work, focus on my (part-time) MBA course and not work again until I could score a finance job. The actual effect of this was unemployment for most of the year, as the banks and investment firms that I pestered with job applications universally spurned me. On the positive side, this meant great swathes of climbing time. Additionally I was single so not subject to many constraints at all. Except lack of money which became more of a concern as the rejection letters piled up.
My most frequent climbing partner at that time was Dan Donovan, also London-based and also under-employed. Dan would go on to greatly surpass me as a climber, notably in the boldness/ adventure dimension, but in 1992 we were still at a similar level and shared many climbing objectives. We were especially keen on climbing in the South West, possibly because of new guidebooks to the area but possibly also because it was the one place in the UK that London climbers weren't disadvantaged in reaching, relative to climbers from further north; in other words, it was a long drive for everyone.
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| Dan climbing Fay at Lower Sharpnose, North Cornwall in 1992 |
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| Dan on the Moon at Gogarth in 1992 |
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| Dan's puffins at Pentire |
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| The puffins enjoying a celebratory cream tea, probably on the weekend in question, very likely here |
On the Saturday we had climbed the West Face, Dream/ Liberator and Desolation Row in Bosigran's atmospheric Great Zawn, then the more obscure Burning Gold at Carn Les Boel. I had never done so many "hard" pitches in a day. Confidence levels were high.
On Sunday we were at Pentire. There were no other climbers. I had led Darkinbad before, with Noel the previous year, so it was Dan's turn to try it. To my quiet satisfaction he fell once - from the only safe part of the route, a short finger-crack. This raised the question of what to do next. We had a new guidebook that listed Black Magic, but had little information except that many "RP"s (small wired brass nuts) were needed. Moreover we had not heard of an ascent by anyone we knew. On the blunt end of the rope my second time up Darkinbad had felt easy and the little crimp edges that littered the face welcoming. Black Magic crossed the same kind of terrain. It seemed reasonable to have a go.
The ascent
I don't remember much about climbing Black Magic. The diary states "a real E5 ... lots harder than Darkinbad" and "ultra-scary" but I don't recall overwhelming fear at the time, more a constant unease. I do remember that the pitch felt very long and that I placed many RP's, but that most of them seemed cosmetic. I also remember pausing at a tenuous rock-up on a small lichenous edge near the end of the pitch and thinking "must absolutely not fall here".
The significance of leading Black Magic became more apparent a few years later. Some time in the mid-1990s my friend Duncan Critchley belayed a rising star amongst London climbers, Alison (by coincidence, the only person I know to have been born on the same day as me) on the first pitch of Black Magic. She slipped near the top, ripping out most of her gear in the fall and ending up close to the giant boulders at the base of the wall. Impacts during her fall badly damaged her ankle, which eventually had to be fused. There is no doubt that I would not have gone near the route had this happened before my ascent.
Even without that future insight, 1992 marked the peak of my not-very-ambitious onsight trad career and I have never again (intentionally) climbed anything as serious as Black Magic. I don't think that was an especially conscious decision, more that my interest in sport climbing began to crowd out everything else and I got out of the habit of bold climbing, which - like most things - benefits from practise.
Subsequent ascents
I have not been back to Pentire but I have spent significantly more time on the Atlantic coast of Devon and Cornwall, sometimes just in tourist mode. I took Shoko to Bosigran, St Ives and Tintagel, a few km north-east of Pentire, on her first visit to the UK in September 1992, and we got married in Crackington Haven, a little further up the coast in 1998.
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| Shoko at Bosigran, Cornwall, 1992 |
