Extreme life-balancing: combining climbing, family and work

“Mum, can we go climbing?” I didn’t even discover rock climbing until I was in my mid-40s, by which time I was mother to Emily and Laura and also a university professor. When Emily asked me whether we could try climbing I remembered how much I’d loved climbing trees as a child and set about finding out how to learn to climb rocks – mindful that it was down to me (their dad wasn’t interested), and that I didn’t want to injure the girls in the process. I found courses: we learned together by going on annual training courses at Plas y Brenin for about three years. I fell in love with climbing, and we had to become self-sufficient and find a way to climb for more than that one week of training a year. An indoor wall opened locally, so we could start to climb independently. But then the girls left home and I had to find other partners. This felt really daunting.

I plucked up courage to approach the local climbing club. Climbing with them was fine: I climbed almost exclusively with men and we went on day trips (or occasionally weekends), driving from Hertfordshire to the Peak District, the Wye Valley, Swanage: all at least two hours’ drive from home. Some of the trips were utterly magical – particularly the sea cliffs at Swanage. But it seemed strange to be going away for holidays without my life partner. Particularly given that both of our jobs were pretty demanding, limiting our time together.

My first Pinnacle Club meet was amazing: I travelled on my own, arrived at Cwm Dyli at about 11pm in the dark (an adventure in itself when you don’t know where you’re going), and felt immediately welcomed. That Saturday was the first time in my few years of climbing when I climbed with someone like me (similar age, similar build, also a mother... and we even discovered we had a friend in common). We finished off our day with The Fang at Tremadog and arrived back late for supper.

With the Pinnacle Club, the main challenge is the journey: it can be hard to arrange transport for weekend trips to places that are typically at least a four-hour drive away (e.g., North Wales, Pembrokeshire or the Lake District). Leaving Hertfordshire by car on a Friday afternoon is a sure way of spending hours on the M1/M6/M4/M5 staring at tail-lights. To get away promptly on a Friday, it’s essential to pack on a Thursday evening. After a demanding week at work, it can be hard to summon the energy. Conversely, I have to get back home on a Sunday in time to unpack and get oriented for whatever Monday morning holds.

Juggling the demands of work and family has always meant that I’ve gone for straightforward climbing options. So I have only ever been to established climbing destinations with guidebooks and clear accommodation options. I’ve also occasionally resorted to taking work on trips with me – e.g., reading a student’s paper outside my tent on a Friday afternoon while waiting for my climbing partner to arrive for the weekend, or lying on my sleeping bag in a hut on a wet day reviewing a PhD thesis. I try to pretend to others that these things don’t happen, but they do.

For what? For the thrills and experiences of climbing – the best way of recharging the batteries I’ve discovered. For solving physical puzzles by moving the body in unlikely ways. For experiencing “flow”, when everything else melts away and the focus is just on the moment and the body moving against the rock, finding the next handhold or foothold or gear placement and forgetting everything else . Or for the moment sitting on a belay ledge part-way up a sea-cliff, aware only of the birds, maybe the seals, and the rope moving through one’s hands, keeping one’s climbing partner safe. Just being in the moment.

It doesn’t take much to knock me out for a season: the year my first grandson was born, I struggled to square the identities of lead climber and being “grannite”; the year I had three leader falls before Easter (in Morocco and Sicily)shook my confidence; the year both my parents were descending into a world of dementia while insisting on living independently was distracting; and forget 2020! It’ll take time to rebuild strength, remember the moves, learn again to spot the holds and the gear placements, and regain confidence that I can climb at all. But it will be worth it.

— Ann Blandford, February 2021

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