There’s something latently arrogant about climbing a new line up the centre of an unclimbed wall and then feeling downbeat when more routes appear to either side. That’s how I felt with Lean Machine at Swanage, one of my top 50 new routes. We’d been steered towards the line, amongst others, when in 1983, during my Swanage phase, I wrote to Scott Titt asking him if he knew of any ‘last great unclimbed walls’. His reply arrived in a matter of a few days: ‘There are still some very steep, big walls with no routes on them at Swanage!  The wall west of Apex Corner is the finest.’

Several weeks later Jim Robertson and I were onto it, and on 11 June 1983 I abseiled down to check if the line was viable especially the exit – a crunchy bed of crockery that may have helped keep early-bird vultures at bay.  Overhanging one in five, the 30-metre high wall looked incredible – one of the most impressive I’d ever seen. Surprisingly, on the abseil, I could see it was interlaced with cracks and jugs especially in its centre – our line. Excitedly Jim and I assembled at the base, humble wannabees craning our necks upwards and outwards sketching out the lay of the land, discussing tactics. Game on. Donning a weighty rack of things large and small, I proceeded onto my arms, triggering the precursor pump, and so climbed back down to base to re-oxygenate. This was but a taster. Above, it was all going to be all about dead-hanging for an hour or so, placing kit, and monitoring fuel levels in order to reserve some energy for the difficult flake at the top. Five years earlier and the first 6 metres would have turned my arms to jelly, but South-East England sandstone had taught me resistance to pain and how to feel comfortable hanging on to rounded sandy holds far worse than anything above us. And so once more onto the wall, the machinery of movement shouldering burning arms and a mounting anxiety that I would make it in one go. After that hour passed, or maybe it was 40 minutes, I struggle over the lip on willpower, the climax awash with the sensations of new routeing. It all felt so fresh and unfettered – a new world for us, and – below – we’d been extraordinarily fortunate to have left a magnificent line, commanding in its singularity.