Nostalgia creeping in

[chickenfeet]

There's nothing like listening to Welsh to get me waxing nostalgic so here's a story from long ago. 25 years ago when I was still living on the Wirral I was a stalwart of the the Chester Mountaineering Club. One summer I found myself climbing with an older chap from Rhyl ( he turned out to be the proprietor of the cafe where my parents did much of their courting). One summer (within the North Welsh definition of the word) afternoon I led him up a rather delicate, polished slab climb somewhere in the Glyders. It was the sort of thing that would have caused Archer Thomson to come up with a description along the lines of "the exiguity of the rugosities was manifest". On arriving at the top. my elderly friend announced "when I was your age, I led that in nails". Seconds after my plummetting lower jaw hit the A5 he followed up with "Of course in those days it had holds on it".