This is not a story about sexually transmitted diseases, marriage, or Miss Monroe This is a story about one ordinary bloke and a rib of limestone in Spain.
I started taking trips to the Costa Blanca in 2005. A mate in the RAF Mountain Rescue had suggested the area as great for a decent weather multi-activity venue. He was right. I have been many times now. I choose to stay in a brothel, albeit one that stopped being a brothel ages ago (damn) and is now an orange coloured house called The Orange House. I didn’t know back then that the owner (Rich Mayfield) was used to epics in the mountains being one of only two participants, in the ill fated military expedition to Mount Kinabalu and Low’s Gully in February 1994, to walk out without being rescued.
So before my first visit I researched everything I could get my hands on about the area. I came across a short, and abruptly ending article by Rowland Edwards for Climb Magazine about a ridge, that he called the Castillets, in the area. I think ridges hold a special place in the psyche of British mountaineers. We cut our Summer and Winter teeth on Sharp, Striding, Tower, Crib Goch, the Aonach, and then we wait for a weather window for the inimitable Cuillin. I quite like climbing, but for some reason I prefer ridges, and, wherever I mountaineer in the world I will always seek a rib to a summit rather than a pure climb.
The area of the Realat Valley, between Sella and Finestrat is one of those places where you can see where you want to be but spend ages finding the road (read gravel track) that gets there. I spent two years worth of visits climbing olive grove terraces and running away from unfed killer hounds before I found the way. Just turn right after the derelict house on the Finestrat to Sella road. Park as far up the road as the assault course put up by the nearby quarry will let you.
Most of the people I take to The Orange House are novice or intermediate climbers. Scrambling up the approach ramp with them is probably the hardest thing they have done on rock. Period. I have had all sorts of sit down protests, teddy throwing escapades and even a Blair Witch project-esque last will and testament recorded in to a mobile ‘phone. I am continually fascinated by different peoples perspectives on risk and on how they like or fear different activities in the mountains. Most of them think that clipping on to a cable alongside a via ferrata stanchion 6oo feet off the floor is safer than standing on terra firms. Albeit steeply inclined terra firma. Each to their own.
The mental and physical skills required to move across terrain of this technicality take years to mature. And split seconds to waste. Like any alpine ridge, safety and speed need to be juggled and traded in order to produce progress. So for those three or four years I would return to the bar at The Orange House and hear the tales of life-changing epics. Meanwhile an itch was growing in me.