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| Bill Peascod's classic Honister Wall ,Hard Severe 4b (US 5.6) Buckstone How,Cumbria. |
| No one could climb at the cutting edge without having more than a fair share of drive and ambition.Bill Peascod may have displayed modesty and humour when describing his exploits on the rock face but without doubt,he delighted in being at one in his environment.A healthy ego is probably essential when you are engaged in pushing the parameters ever outward.No place for faint hearts or self doubt. As someone imbued with the spirit of the mountains,it was surely no suprise when he did tear himself away from his beloved Fell country,he re-discovered it,twelve thousand miles away,in his art. Returning to his native Fells after twenty four years away,his Japanese second wife,Etsu,recognized straightaway those luminous skies and the dark,brooding hills of his Australian paintings,telling him that even in another hemisphere,his heart shaped his art. |
| Now the Fells brimmed with outdoor activists,affluent,mobile and sated with every convenience.Keswick bristled with climbing shops,bookshelves heaved under the weight of guide books,maps,coffee table tomes of mountain photography,auto biographies etc,etc...... Walkers and climbers jostled in The Fish andThe Bridge.Honister Pass crawled with coaches and cars.Those long years away had taken their toll on those former brothers and sisters in arms with whom he had shared the fells in the 40's and 50's.Those still living now of more ample girth,of thinning hair,arthritic joints and crooked knee...and that was just the barmaids ! Thankfully, a new generation of Fell tigers had not forgotten his contribution to their sport and in those all too short years before his death he found himself out on the crags once again with many who had taken on his pioneering mantle. One of those junior partners was Cumbrian based Scot,David Craig who persuaded Bill out on to the Fells to repeat many of his classic routes. Walking up to Arenig Fawr one day with David and Harold Drasdo,I was fascinated to hear David's first hand account of climbing with Bill in those short but bountiful years.Once again new routes began to fall,if not at the rate and of the quality of previous years then at least the candle flared before the guttering flame was extinguished.And that's the thing about heroes they know how to make an exit.Behan's last words to a nun...May you marry the Pope and may all your children be Bishops......Dylan Thomas self destructing in The Chelsea Hotel NYC;Guevara riddled with bullets in the Bolivian jungle......Well,it sure beats zimmering off in the Seaview retirement home,Bognor Regis ! And Bill ....? |
| Why,nothing so gruesome for William.A romantic death with a sprinkling of irony.Where better for a climber to die than on the rock face with friends ? Not a screaming arc into space followed the momentary rippling of shifting scree.Just a brief shaft of pain as the heart judders to a stop....and that's it; Goodnight sweet prince. The supreme irony for Bill as a Cumbrian climbing legend was his destiny to die on a Welsh crag.Not any old Welsh crag mind you but the Welsh crag...Cloggy.Six months later Don Whillans who had lowered his lifeless body to the scree was gone too.Another hero had bitten the dust. Ten years on I followed the gentle grass track to Buckstone How,the late June sky darkening with each step.The rain forecast for earlier now looked imminent.Liam my then 14 year old son and I had just completed Troutdale Pinnacle over the pass in Borrowdale and had charged over to try Bill's classic Honister Wall.Apparently this 1946 route was his personal favourite and he had completed it so many times he knew intimately every ripple of stone,every hollow flake and weeping crack.For myself,this was my first time and I hoped it would be gentle with me...... |
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| Liam Appleby on the top pitch of Troutdale Pinnacle.Severe, US (5.4) Shepherds Crag, Borrowdale,England |
| The route unfolded as a delighfully steep,absorbing climb.Technically straighforward but never less than entertaining.The vertical landscape fractured and coloured with the grey/greens and ochre shades of weather beaten slate and vegetation.The sombre colours of rock and earth lifting our gaudy climbing apparel from the stone,,allowing tourist coaches and late returning walkers to pick out our caranvanserai high above the pass. On the suppossed crux,the black wall,the first spots of rain began to speckle the rock making me anxious an impatient as I moved out on to the steep,exposed wall.Thankfully,we escaped the worst of the elemental onslaught until we had finished.As I took in the rope,the rain began to wash down the valley ,my bare arms stung by the viperous gusts. As evening began to fall into night,Liam and I picked our way through the slate fields,heading back towards the grinning lights of the YHA hostel and the car headlights which cut through the gloom.That night,we hurriedly pitched Liam's old tent by the side of the road in Newlands Pass and attempted to make a meal by torchlight as gusting winds bellied the walls of the tent and tore at the humming cords |
| That night I lay under the rippling skin and listened to the sound of the Fells.Its discordant anthem an elemental onslaught.......At least some things don't change.I imagined a young fell tiger,sixty years ago,sheltering under an old army taup on such a brimming night as this.The heavy canvas cracking,the frayed edges flapping wildly as fists of rain punched through the gaps. Every bristling sensation tuned to the counterpoint of air and water.To the endless water song of the hills....................... |
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| Journeyman |
| 'Journey after Bill'-continued |
| His eventual homecoming was not so much the return of the conquering hero,more a quiet re-entry into a world which had changed considerably in the intervening years of exile |
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