Page under construction!
This has been inspired by the approach used by Neil MacGregor, outgoing Director of the British Museum, in (among other books) his History of the World in 100 Objects. The idea is that the Objects tell the story of the Club and its people – not just historically, but in its present incarnation too. The growing collection allows us to tell some personal stories, give attention to some of those ordinary-taken-for-granted objects that are important in the life of the Club, and to celebrate those things we all share and which give the people of the Anabasis their collective identity.
The 50 objects can be downloaded as a series of pdf files from here
Click on the links below to get to any one object or just scroll down to see them all:
| 1. The Objects | 2. Red Fleece-lined sleeping bag | 3. The cement mixer | 4. A pink tape sling |
| 5. A square frying pan | 6. The meets list | 7. A Cadbury’s crème egg | 8. Sheep |
Object number one – The Objects
These statements appeared in the 2013 constitution:
2.4 The purposes of the Club are to promote and provide support for the amateur sport of mountaineering and community participation in that sport. KR
2.4.1 The term ‘mountaineering’ is deemed to include climbing and walking and related activities such as caving, fell-running and skiing.
The letters KR indicate that this is a ‘Key Rule’. Identifying the Key Rules was necessary in order to get the Club’s Governing Document into the format required for registration as a Community Amateur Sport Club, a status that would have enabled us to claim Gift Aid on donations. We were not successful in this in the first instance and it was not been pursued further.
There is a link to the 2013 Constitution on the Anabasis downloads page.
The previous (1992) Constitution stated that:
The objects of the Club shall be to encourage the pursuits of mountaineering, walking, skiing, cave exploration and fell running; to bring together men and women who are interested in these pursuits and to whatever shall be deemed by the Committee, or the Club from time to time, to be conducive to the attainment of the foregoing objectives.
I am sure there is lots more to be said about all that but it’s enough for now!
Object number 2 – A Red Fleece-Lined Sleeping Bag (Simon Letts)
It lives in the cupboard in our bathroom, hidden by all sorts of other sleeping bags, duvets, sheets. It wa probably the second or third time I’d stayed at the hut; I wasn’t a member then, just Dave’s guest. Dave, a member of a climbing club; I didn’t know people like that. On the first occasion, I’d been introduced to Stan, with the words
“He’s a runner”. I didn’t even really understand what that meant; all I knew was that Stan, the Runner, had cycled over from Liverpool, so he was more than just a runner. I didn’t know people who did that sort of thing.
One of the next times, we went to Craig Yr Ysfa and I met Rob, with the hint that “he’s a properclimber”. We’d set off early, before Rob arrived, so my first sight of him was a figure powering up the access road below us. I didn’t know people who did that sort of thing. At the crag a route called Mur y Niwl was pointed out and I was told that someone called Billy had climbed it recently. It looked hard to my new eyes. I didn’t know people who could do that sort of thing. (It is hard, Ed.)
One of the next times, we went to Craig Yr Ysfa and I met Rob, with the hint that “he’s a properclimber”. We’d set off early, before Rob arrived, so my first sight of him was a figure powering up the access road below us. I didn’t know people who did that sort of thing.
At the crag a route called Mur y Niwl was pointed out and I was told that someone called Billy had climbed it recently. It looked hard to my new eyes. I didn’t know people who could do that sort of thing. (It is hard, Ed.)
Anyway, the red fleece sleeping bag? I’d got to the hut and realised I had no bag – what to do? A visit to Joe Brown’s shop was the answer and I was sold something they told me would be a two-season bag or a four-season inner – very useful. All I can think is that Garth must have its own seasons – I was frozen! I don’t often use the bag these days, it’s too hot to be an inner and not good enough on its own. I don’t forget my down bag anymore, though.
Nowadays the bag usually stays in the cupboard but whenever I happen to see it poking out from under the other stuff I always get a warm feeling, remembering those cold nights and the fact that I still know those same people, and more, who do that sort of thing.
Object number 3 – The Cement Mixer
The cement mixer has an illustrious history, initally serving time with the President during the construction of his present house, before being passed to the Club for duties associated with maintenance work at the
Hut. The principle keeper of the cement mixer during the works was Billy Murphy and the picture shows him feeding the beast from its supply of feed in the yellow buckets. On the many occasions he was subject to abuse and ill-treatment by his work colleagues, Billy could be found seeking solace with the cement mixer. As is clear from the photo, it was a relationship founded on deep levels of mutual affection and regard.
The cement mixer resembles an infant child in that it requres constant feeding and cleaning and generates semi-solid material of varying consistency. In key respects, however, it differs from the child: whereas the infant human has separate openings for imbibement and evacuation, the cement mixer has just the one, everything going in and out through the same orifice. The point may be made that the infant child (and indeed other humans when unwell) will on occasion use the same opening for imbibement and evacuation, but the key characteristic differentiating factor remains. A further feature which separates the cement mixer from the infant child is that, in the case of the mixer, what comes out of the opening is far more useful than what goes in.This little whimsy is weighted with the gravity of truth: dung has been used as a building material for thousands of years.
Object number 4 – A Pink Tape Sling
My last climbing visit to Clogwyn d’ur Arddu was a while back, maybe 18 years ago. I was with my mate Simon Letts and our main objective for the day was Llithrig, a climb of Hard Very Severe standard, on the East Buttress. First climbed by Joe Brown and Nat Allen in 1952, it moves from the foot of a deep cleft (Sunset Crack) onto an open wall where the crux moves lead to a spike whence a ledge low down on the right is attained by a swing/lower/downclimb manouevre providing sufficient oomph! is attained to prevent being dragged back into space by the rope. There was a pink tape sling on the spike and after Simon joined me on the ledge we flicked it off and continued upwards without further (or at least not very much) ado. Of course all this is supposed to be climbed ‘free’ these days but as well as making it easier, the character of the climb owes much to the rope antics originally thought to be required. We continued to the top of the East Buttress by way of the Direct Finish at Hard Severe and then decided to embark on a West Buttress adventure to round off the day. In the event, discretion was easily the better part of what little valour we had left to call on and we opted for Pedestal Crack. Taken by its Direct Start it proved fruitier than anything we had encountered on Llithrig. After, that as the athletes say, we had left nothing on the track.
So that was my last climbing visit to Clogwyn d’ur Arddu but it was not my last encounter with that greatest of Welsh mountain cliffs. In Summer 2013 I went up in the train with Jackie (yes…the train!) and on reaching the top she decided to eschew her return ticket in favour of
a linger on the summit and a leisurely walk down in the evening sunshine. My reward was a great look at Cloggy which was more than just a view, it was as if a book had opened before me and there for me to look at were some of the best days of life and I was once again with the people I had shared them with. The picture gives no sense of scale- it’s 250 feet from top to bottom. Llithrig takes the wall between the deep cleft of Sunset Crack on the left and the sunlit blocky line of Piggot’s Climb on the right. When I check in at the end I shall report to the Big Fella upstairs: ‘days well lived, those, climbing Llithrig with Simon and taking the train up Snowdon with Jackie. And here’s the pink tape sling and a picture to prove it’.
Thank you Lyn Appleton for an excellent Object!
I’ve never seen a square frying pan since. Once, it disappeared for ages. The Square Frying Pan speaks of full English breakfasts washed down with endless cups of tea, followed later by mugs of instant coffee, whilst outside driving rain kept us off the hill and we were free to enjoy bacon, sausages, eggs, fried bread, fried tomatoes, tomato ketchup or HP, slices of white bread to mop up the bacon fat, and toast with lashings of butter and jam. (A good square meal! ed.)
Healthy eating hadn’t come to our shores yet. And, anyway, we’d work it all off on the Hill once the rain stopped…
A greasy breakfast was the panacea for a hangover. True! And whilst we fried, dim recollections from the previous night would be examined and elaborated on, heroes were made and winnets (whinnets?) mocked. Good-natured banter, lots of laughter, and cigarette smoke filled the Hut. That’s going back a bit.
I am advised by Roger Reid that the term ‘winnet’ was created by Ray Rogers, and instantly adopted by George M. It was loudly, joyously – and frequently – hurled at someone whose performance, despite majorly good intentions, was pathetic.
George Murphy reports that the Square Frying pan was the work of a Cammell Laird apprentice.
Object Number 6 – The Meets List
Here is an Object that may make some of our older members misty-eyed with nostslgia – the Meets List. Of course we still have a Meets List of sorts now but it is a somewhat phantom thing which makes fleeting appearances on the website and in no way comparable to the physical reality of the List on the Meets Card. Interestingly, nowhere on the Card does it reveal what year it was, but a bit of detective work by yours truly indicates that it was 1982.
The Meets List reads like a roll call of high ambition and order of fun, with gatherings at Anglesey, Pembroke,
the Yorkshire Dales (under and over), the Lakes, and at two ends of some kind of spectrum – a Skye Ridge trip and a Booze Up at the Hut. Were both these, I wonder, delivered as advertised? My money is on just the one, and that one being the Booze Up. Now someone will tell I am wrong, and that the Skye Ridge was indeed done – I hope so! And there was to be a Winter Meet – that was before the sun rock days!
I leave you to wonder, if it is in your lifetime: what did I (meaning you, not me!) do in 1982?
Object Number 7 – A Cadbury’s crème egg
Thank you to EstherThrelfall for this very tasty object (and as you see, we get not one but two).
A few years ago I stayed at the hut over Easter weekend with a friend. Sadly there was only the two of us there but we had a fabulous day, with glorious weather for doing the Snowdon Horseshoe. In fact the unexpected weather meant that we got a little sunburnt and my winter walking trousers were rather too hot. The weekend took me on a trip down memory lane and I spent the time with ghosts of Easters past
The highlight of the morning was Dave Barton’s Easter Egg hunt and we loved following him around the outside of the hut and no doubt squeaked with delight each time we found a cream egg deftly hidden and lovingly left by the Easter Bunny. It was a magical time of year with lambs in the fields and everything coming back to life. In my mind, the sun always shone at Easter. Whether that is true or not, I’m happy for it to remain that way in childhood memory.
Object Number 8 – (A) Sheep
Linguistically, the ‘sheep’ is interesting in that the word has no, and needs no, plural, encompassing as it does both a single animal and a multitude of them. It is, therefore, at one and the same time single in its plurality and plural in its singularity.
It is easy to take our woolly friends for granted, but they are integral to the Anabasis tree of life – without the sheep, no farm at Garth and without the farm, no abandoned barn which became our Hut. Without the sheep, the Snowdonia we know and love would wear a coat of trees up to 2,000 feet. Igneous upheaval and glacial gouging may have given the landscape its figure, but it is the sheep – the one and the many – who tailor its outfit. And when the wind falls still, the music of the mountains is the sound of the sheep.
Sheep farming is in decline in Snowdonia. At the end of the ninetheenth century, there were over 3,000 farms in Snowdonia, by the 1960’s this had dropped to 1,600 and there were only 1,000 actively working by 2010. Only larger scale farms are viable and Thomas Jones at Garth has been able to expand through acquisition of a farm in Llanwrst.
Much of what little I know about sheep farming I learned from Thomas Firbank’s book ‘I Bought A Mountain’. Of course it was not a mountain that he bought but The farm accross the valley from Garth: we came to know it as Esmé’s place, for Esmé his then wife who stayed on after they went their separate ways during the Second World War. Some things will have changed since Firbank wrote his book (1940), with National Park rules and EEC regulation and economics having a big say over the farming industry in Snowdonia, but I bet the fundamentals of what Firbank called ‘the ultimate joy of tending nature in her labour’, remain unchanged. At this time of year (March) the new-born lambs are evidence of nature’s labour continuing: in their singularity and plurality, the sheep are always with us. In Christine Garster/McCombe’s lovely words:
‘The sheep are Wales, the sheep are peace, the sheep are grounding, they are just there.’
(There’s more on the sheep at Object 22 and at Object 40)