Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
difficult to know these many years on if that is really how she saw us all - as far as
I know the club had neither.
Alex joined the club during fresher enrolment. John Powell recalls seeing him in
some of the classes they shared together. 'He always sat on his own, but he had a
Joe Brown rucksack, a leather jacket and, of course, his hair was out all over the
place, so he didn't quite fit. He was not quite the picture of your normal student at
the time. So I thought he might be a climber and I went over to talk to him. But he
was pretty stand-offish, wanted to play it cool.'
Alex was quite taciturn when he first arrived at Leeds. It was his nature to stand
back and weigh things up, particularly with new people, before he opened up. For
the first couple of months, he did not attend a club meet, or join in at the evening
through his growing friendship with John Powell, who was reading the same
course. Alex joined the fast track to develop his climbing and gain access to the in-
ner clique.
'Once I got hold of a van,' John said, 'the regular crew of John Syrett, Andy Wild,
Alex and I were getting out every weekend, climbing and then gate-crashing
parties in the evenings. Climbing and partying were joint-top in our list of priorit-
ies. In fact, we combined them the very first time I climbed with Alex, shimmying
up a drainpipe behind the student union building to get into the freshers' ball. We
never paid for entrance to anything if there was another way in.'
Blue Ford vans were popular among climbers; they were cheap to run and easy to
repair. There were at least three owned by club members: John Powell, Bernard
Newman and Alex himself. I doubt if any of them would be legal today. Tax, insur-
ance and MOTs were all seen as unnecessary and expensive accessories. Tyres
were worn down until the metal cores showed through. All the vans were con-
stantly in scrapes and prangs but no one ever had a serious crash. A new dent
happened almost on a weekly basis. If another car was involved, it meant cash had
to exchange hands pretty quickly, especially if the car was also without insurance.
John Powell recalled having to swallow his panic when stopped by the police dur-
ing a late night drive up to the Lake District after the pub.
'You seem to have been driving all over the road, sir,' the officer said, shining his
torch on each of the faces of the occupants of the van.
'Sorry, officer just a bit tired you know.'
'Come far then?'
'Oh yes, from Leeds.' The officer was silent for a moment. Leeds was less than an
hour's drive away.
