1981
Sometime this year I started climbing with Geoff Douglas. Geoff was a tall, streak of a climber who lived near Matlock. He was an intelligent and affable bloke who had been to sea in his past and had a small tattoo on his ear lobe thereby acquired which he was embarrassed about. His partner was Sue, of equal intelligence and very quiet.  I think the first route we did together was “Face Route” at Gordale. We also did a lot of routes on Chee Tor and in The Lakes. A good day at Goat Crag resulted in ascents of  “Bitter Oasis”, “Athanor” and “Tumbleweed Connection” followed up the next day at Wharncliffe with “Western Front” and “Wall of Horrors” (again!) 

I had a trip to Wales with Geoff Douglas on the 20/21 August. We climbed “Wonderwall” and “Hombre” on Gogarth and then “10 degrees North”, “Windmill”, and “Superdirect” on The Mot. On the Saturday evening we met Tony Preston in the Victoria pub in Llanberis and laughed and laughed at his stories of diving in Greece. At Pete’s Eats on the Sunday we met Mark Pretty and Tom Jones. 


Meeting up with Tony, Ron, Geoff and Sue at October half term we headed for Cornwall where Ron and Tony had stayed at a cottage during their Christmas holidays. The rain poured down and we abandoned the idea of camping and called on speck to the cottages. In the wind and rain we met a dear old lady who Ron and Tony recognised as the mother-in-law of the owner of the cottages. She was a little vague but she let us in and we dumped all our gear and headed out to The Radjel pub in Pendeen returning later to sleep soundly in the Cornish gale. Occupying ourselves the next day near Land’s End we returned to the cottage in the cold, dark and wet to discover that all our possessions had been gathered up by the police and taken to the police station in Penzance. The aggressive police had been called by the cottage owner and we had been mistaken for vagabonds, the sweet little old lady being ignored or not asked what had happened. Demonstrating true Cornish hospitality we received no apology nor were we invited back to the cottage, even though Tony and Ron were old clients. We went to camp at Sennen for the rest of the week which was unremarkable except for the amount of water that came out of the heavens.

1982
France at Easter with Kit and Zippy allowed us to pack a hell of a lot into a fortnight: Le Saussois, Saint Victoire, Sainte Baume, The Verdon, Buoux, Buis, and Fontainbleau. We suffered indifferent weather sometimes with heavy rain and even some snow. Geoff and Sue were camped at  Sainte Victoire and Geoff joined Zippy and me on some routes.