[John Proctor]

I feel that I must add my own trip report. On saturday night I stayed with a friend in New Mills and we had a good evening drinking white wine and his homemade aperol. Then on sunday morning we set off to spend a day climbing at the Roaches, before changing our minds and visiting the nearby esoterica crag of Gradbach Hill after seeing that the Roaches was absolutely heaving. We climbed a lot of short but pleasant esoterica and I didn’t pay any attention to my phone buzzing away in my rucksack as it was probably just one of those annoying facebook group chats or that bl**dy estate agent again…

At about 4.45pm, just as we were gearing up for our last climb I decided to quickly check my phone just on the off chance it was something that required my attention. Lo and behold a flurry of messages from Scaife and Carol advising me that Alex had dropped his car keys in the cave so was now minus his car, phone, house keys and wallet. I couldn’t quite work out what was the point of Alex being driven home post-haste when he had no house keys but that seemed to be what was happening. Meanwhile I had instructions to go home as soon as possible… My climbing partner does have a guilty secret of a keen interest in caving in his earlier life, keen enough to make him quite unsympathetic as to why on earth you would take your car keys down a cave in the first place? Nevertheless we decided to pass on the last climb so that I could get home “as soon” as I could. But as soon as possible was not that soon as I had to get a lift back to New Mills to pick up my trusty steed, The Golden Arrow, then put the bike on the train to Manchester and ride 18 miles home from there.

So in the end Alex arrived home at 6pm still wearing his wet undersuit, ignored my earlier suggestion over the phone that now would be a good time to get to know the neighbours better and went for a series of illuminating walks in the local area to keep warm until I arrived at 8:30pm. His car remains 45 miles away. It is cyclable.

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