For the entire week I thought it was the wrong day. This wouldn't matter, you would have thought, not when you're camping in the forest 5km from the nearest town. Well no. But when you're supposed to ring someone on Friday, it takes on a new urgency.
After the debacle that was the first day in Font, the second was a miracle, a true joy. The sun shone, the forest sparkled and I found heaven in the sandy shores of Area 95.2. Relatively close to the campsite, and not to hard to find, I stumbled across it after taking a wrong turning. I was aiming to go there, luckily, but I was headed in the wrong direction. I told you the guide was crap.
The bit I found was a little deserted, the boulders a little too green for my first taste of Font, but it would do. A Black Redstart kept me company with its crumpled-up paper song and lizards flickered across the boulders, the ferns crunchy under my feet as I moved from one boulder to the next.
I knew the grades were stiff, but on the first day I truly got an ego bashing. Without a mat the landings were a lot more interesting than I'd been led to expect and the stillness and silence in the hot sun a little creepy. This was clearly snake country and I wasn't too keen on stepping on one, so I swished my way through the undergrowth with a stick.
I'd just completed my first 5, a 5c (see photos), with a really very interesting landing when I spied some other climbers. Finally. I shouted hello and they shouted back. We quickly established we were both British and I jumped off the boulder to go say hi, nearly treading on a snake as I landed. It was only small, thinner than my little finger and maybe 10 cm long, chequered and with a disproportionately large, diamond-shaped head. One of their party turned out to be some sort of snake expert and declared it to be a juvenile Asp of some kind (He wasn't very good at the European Vipers, he explained in a particularly British apology for his ignorance). So poisonous then.
For the non-climbers I'll spare the details. But it was perfect. Absolutely amazing climbing, gorgeous sunshine and, once we'd located the main area, lovely soft sandy landings. The only issue was that I didn't have any lunch or much water. A minor issue when the climbing was so good.
I slept much better that night, having begun to establish the clothing system that would later see me through the night. Dinner was the last packet of crisps and an apple, as I couldn't be bothered with the 8km roudn trip to the shops. The unopened bag of pasta stood in the corner in its incriminating tastiness and unavailable rawness. Damn gas.
Catastrophe struck the next day. The morning had gone so well. I'd found a village without a shop and still couldn't find food. But a kind lady gave me a lift to the supermarket after I'd piteously asked her husband for directions to the nearest shop for a little something for lunch and he'd laughed at the idea of it. As if anyone would come to Noisy Sur Ecole looking for a shop. Clearly only some sort of foreign idiot.
I'd been dropped back in the village, fully stocked up and ready to go, so I walked back to the forest and settled on climbing in the easily accessible Roches aux Sabons. Another perfect venue, I couldn't believe it.
Just as I thought my luck was turning, that was when fate rolled the dice a I got a big fat zero. Or something. Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds, according to FDR. That's rubbish. It was fated, ever since I stepped off that RER a million kilometres away, that it would all go down hill. And it couldn't go more downhill on a climbing trip than getting a finger injury. On the second day.
And this wasn't any old tendon strain. This was some proper weird-ass, crazy finger injury that made my finger pop as I flexed it and sent bolts of pain streaking down my finger. It was really buggered.
And that was that really. I moped and I whined. I complained and then had some lunch and moped a bit more, kicking the boulders pointlessly, scuffing the sand with my big toe and pouting. But it wouldn't fix it. Fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny, I've heard it said. No. Fate is for those too weak to pull on that one-finger pocket crimp on that stupid 7b overhanging arete. Actually it didn't happen there at all. It happened somewhere between a 4b orange circuit slab and the overhang and I can't explain it at all. The overhang just made it worse. But you can't say you hurt your finger whilst walking between problems. That's worse than saying you hurt it crimping on a 4b slab.
Damn finger.
I grew accustomed to the idea of being injured and took the rest of the day off to enjoy the sunshine, visting other areas and chatting with people or just watching them climb. I'd forgotten my book so there wasn't anything else to do.
Thinking it was Thursday, I planned to take the next day off and walk to Fonatinebleau itself. It was far, but doable, especially if I got up early. I'd come home and ring Brice in the evening. A perfect plan.
So on Saturday morning I woke up early and got ready. As I was washing, it dawned on me, this wasn't Friday, not at all. This was Saturday. This changed everything. I had entirely failed to call Brice.
"So how are we going to meet up?"
"I'll call you. Cos I won't get reception in the forest. There'll be a payhone."
"Ok, call me on Friday evening."
"I'll call you."
"You promise?"
"Yeah, I promise."
"You won't forget? You'll call me on Friday? Because I can't call you, ok?"
"Dude, I'll call you. No worries. I won't forget."
I felt terrible. I couldn't walk into Fontainebleau as Brice was supposed to be coming, but I'd no idea if he would. I called him at half past eleven and woke him up. Great. Even better. Now he's cranky.
Some time before I'd called him, that morning in fact, I'd checked my phone to see the date. Oh shit. I'd got the wrong date. I'd told him I was leaving on the Tuesday for Madrid, but my phone said it was the 27th. My diary said I was leaving on the 29th, so that meant I was going not on Tuesday but on Monday. So I'd have to leave the forest a day early. Our plan to meet up and came for two days was rapidly unravelling.
We hatched a mad plan to meet up. He'd come for one night and we'd go back the next day. It was a crazy plan and it would never have worked, involving him cycling to Milly from the train station, and me walking there and us meeting up and him with no map. It was nuts. Luckily we called it off.
The next day, as I checked out, the guy at the counter gave me a receipt. The 27th it said. Oh. I carried on casually, thinking someone somewhere had got it wrong, and it sure as hell wasn't me. Ha. The fool.
As I waited for my taxi to the station (I wasn't walking back, not when I had to get back to Paris for midday, as it would have been nearly six hours of travelling, meaning leaving at 6am on a Sunday) I looked at my phone again.
28/3/2002.
I looked at it again.
28/3/2002. It said.
I couldn't believe it. I was right, I was leaving on Tuesday. I was leaving Font a day early, all because I hadn't looked at my phone properly. Fate I tell you. Sure, yeah, I was an idiot for not looking at the whole thing, but this would never have happened if it had read 13/3/2002. I mean, I knew roughly what the day date was. If I'd read 4 or 17 or something I would have immediately known it was wrong, rather than just being one day out and therefore not noticing.
If each man is an architect for his own fate, then I must be one of those architects that still uses big fat washable crayons and sticks his tongue out of the corner of his mouth while trying to draw a straight line.
