Joint Meet with the NPC at Cratcliffe – By J. D. Grayson.

2nd September 1956

The weather might well have washed the memory of this meet right out of members’ minds, but our visitors, The Northern Pennine Club, were instrumental in making the meet have the opposite effect. They arrived on the Saturday night and were entertained at the Club Hut. One of the party, albeit abetted by DPC members, perpetrated such an act of folly on the Saturday night that the following day did not lack for conversation.

Sunday itself started and continued in a cloudburst. The leader was eventually joined by two members and one visitor at Cratcliffe, but even getting out of one’s car in that torrent of rain was out of the question. The party therefore repaired to the Club Hut to find those that had spent the night there in a high state of excitement. A visitor’s car had, on the previous night, left the Grindleford – Calver Sough road and had finished an exciting run (through fence, field, wall and wood) close to a river 400 yards from, and 400 feet below the road. The retrieving of the car and the repairs to the wall (all in the pouring rain) occupied members for some time, and did much to divert general frustration at the weather into useful channels.

On reassembling at the Hut, there were found to be five visitors present and eight members (Howes, Hastings, Carr, Vessey, Chatburn, Grainger, Chantry and Grayson). In the absence of other occupation the fire was built up in the grate, the rain pelted on the windows, sandwiches were unwrapped and bottles opened, and the story of the previous night’s epic grew in statistics (50 mph at least) and excitement. The shrill cry of “**** , there’s a wood” echoed round the room to the glee of all assembled.

Vessey, Grayson, and a private guest David Law, jealous of the honour of the Club, slipped out and essayed four climbs on Froggatt in miserably wet conditions. They returned to the Hut to find all the rest in a state of contemplative inebriation. All bottles appeared to be empty. They stand to this day on the mantlepiece as a token of the success of the inaugural Club Hut meet.

The Vice President, claiming to have been doing solo climbs on Cratcliffe, arrived for tea along with Slack and Finch.