After seeing a picture of a cool-looking climb in a book and then finding out it was only a HS James was very keen for a trip to Lundy. Which is tiny (5km long and 1 km wide), but has lots of sea cliff climbing on its west face. To stay at the island you normally have to book well in advance as there are only 40 camping spots but we managed to book at the last minute to take advantage of a decent climbing weather window. The camping and ferry cost us around £150 each for 3 days.
We drove down to spend a night at the Shepton the evening before the ferry then continued our journey to Ilfracombe harbour the next morning. If you’re staying on the island you can have some of your luggage stored in the ship’s cargo hold and then tractored to your accommodation. James and I packed all our climbing stuff in our hand luggage so we could head out straight for the climbs when we arrived. Once on the island, we went straight to the west face of the island. Tired from the walk/heat but excited to get on the rocks we saw some signs telling us to stay on the footpath because of nesting birds.
After checking the guidebook it said to check with the island warden before climbing access to areas of the island were under constant review for nesting birds. We walked to the tavern where the staff pointed us to the notice board which displayed the most up-to-date climbing restrictions. Basically the entire island other than the east face (which had only a few grim-looking climbs) and the devil’s slide were open for climbing, with the rest of the island marked in red.
The island had a new warden who had put strict climbing restrictions in place to help increase the population of rare birds. So instead, James and I went for a walk to look at the birds that were apparently more important than our climbing routes and play with the lambs near the campsite.
We set up the tent in the evening and decided to have a quick nap, planning to wake up later and check out bio-luminescent algae near the harbour. Next thing I knew I was being woken up by James at 3am asking if I was still keen to go to the harbour, which was a 40-minute walk away. I was quite sleepy, so I decided to sack it off, James went without me. I fell asleep and woke to James complaining that his trip was a disaster. He made it about halfway before twisting his ankle and having to limp back up the hill.
We got up and ate some of the peanut butter flavour porridge I’d mistaken for golden syrup-flavoured porridge. James said it tasted like shoes. It was perfect climbing weather and we were (unsurprisingly) the only climbers on the island. We made our way over to the 50m abseil anchor at the base of the sea cliffs to start the devil’s slide.
If you were confident you could probably rig the boulder as a pull-through and go back to collect your abseil tat later meaning you wouldn’t need to carry a 50m rope around with you. James and I brought a static line to be on the safe side. From the bottom the climb looks pretty cool, the single biggest piece of granite (100m tall) in Britain.
The rock was impressively grippy, despite being pretty featureless you could hold yourself with no hands anywhere on the climb. I led the first pitch, the guidebook said to climb up 22 meters and then set up a belay station before carrying on where the abseil tat was. Seeing as I had 60m half ropes I decided just to climb the full 50m to save faff. The climbing was straightforward for HS with 90% of the grade coming from the fact there were only about 4-5 gear placements and they were mostly naff for the first half of the climb, on the last 20 m I couldn’t place any gear at all.
James led the next pitch and was able to fiddle a bit more gear in on his way up. After about 20 minutes he’d nearly reached the next belay station but he wasn’t having a good time. His shoes didn’t fit very well and were hurting his feed. He was also getting psyched out by the climb, which was surprising, I’d recently seen James lead E1 climbs. Something about being 60 m above the ground on unfamiliar rock with rubbish gear got to him.
After an hour of contemplation and up/down climbing James decided to come back down and let me lead the rest of the climb. The climb was a bit steeper on the second half so you needed to be careful with where you put your feet and body position. You also needed to accept that if you did fall at any point you’d probably cheese grate yourself on about 20m of granite before stopping.
The last part of the pitch was the worst, the last piece of gear I placed was an unconvincing gold offset (some DMM fireflies would have been nice) and the final moves were to traverse sideways to get to the next ledge. The only piece of gear I could find before the traverse was an old rusty piton, I decided to use it mainly for psychological reasons. I then started gingery making my across, finding the only gear placement already taken by a rusty stuck wire. I decided to use this as well.
Now it was James’s turn to make his way up the climb. He climbed the route with ease proving it was all in his head, I decided it was probably best not to let him know the only gear protecting his traverse at the top of the 100m climb was some dodgy in-situ tat and a small wobbly offset. James looked unconvinced by the piton but I reassured him the rest of the gear was bomber so he had nothing to worry about on the traverse. He was shocked to discover the rest of the gear protecting his climb was also terrible. But lying to him did the job and he was across the traverse in no time. James led the final pitch where the climbing was harder but the gear placements were abundant so he felt right at home. Happy we’d accomplished our goal of climbing the devil’s side we went to the island’s only pub for a celebratory post-climbing meal.
The weather on the final day of our trip was pretty miserable so we spent the entire day inside playing board games. The local pub has quite a large collection to choose from (presumably for sad climbers in wet weather). We arrived half an hour early for the boat so James went for a quick swim by the boat.
On the way back James and I stayed over at the BEC and did the Swildons short round the day after. It had been quite a few years since I’d done the short round and had no idea where I was going. About halfway through the trip, it had gotten to the point where I’d taken so many guesses at junctions that I had as much chance of getting lost on the remainder of the round trip as I did finding my way back. I reassured James that although I had no idea where we were I could probably guess the way on vibe I was getting about each junction. We finally found our way to the main streamway then headed out and back home.
