as Francois Villon put it. Indeed, where are the snows of yester year? I don’t think that he was just a ski enthusiast disappointed by the effects of global warming. He has come to speak for all of us, looking back on aspects of our present life in which we appear to have fallen away from the glory of our youth. I had a Villon moment today.
I am pleased that I have been managing to get out an do a little climbing despite the fact that the regime of social distancing means that I have lost my partners. Today I managed to get out to a place called Pule Hill, high in the Pennines on the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire. There is a natural outcrop of gritstone there that is not high, and it does have a good range of climbs in the easier grades. In my present condition it is manageable. The expedition was not quite the success I had imagined.
A primary problem was that I left behind a couple of items of safety equipment which would have been very useful. As a consequence of this I did find the climbs scarier than anticipated at the beginning, until I learned to trust the alternative arrangements I managed to make. Even so, I was keenly aware that when I fist visited this place back in 1999 I was free-climbing the routes I found daunting today. Looking through my copy of the guidebook I also noticed that I had managed routes several grades more difficult that I could consider today, even with a partner to belay me properly. Even so, the expedition was more successful than last week’s visit to Scout Crag.
I mentioned my sense of disappointment to my wife when I got home, and she actually laughed. What man of seventy-eight, she asked, is not going to experience growing difficulty in climbing with advancing years? I guess she has a point, although I do remember with great pleasure those glorious “snows of yesterday’s year”. I am so glad that I don’t (yet) have that feeling about my art.