In reply to Suncream:
I visited last summer. The chap I went with is a really competent climber and had done one of the big E2s on the back wall and wanted now to try a big E3 nearby. It's the part of quarry that the BMC says something poetic about it, like it being an inland version of the great Pembroke cliffs or whatever!
Roger was doing a fine job powering up. He had climbed a slightly dubious crack/corner system, clipped some insitu gear, placed lots of his own gear. He got up to a pretty compact, solid looking wall that seemed to after maybe about five or six metres give way to some easier looking cracks to the top - I reckon he was probably about 18 to 20 mtrs up. Anyway, he was styling up this compact wall section, not real gear to put in, but the rock looked solid, when he just pulled a big edge off that both hands were on. I held the fall fine - but he went effing miles! If I remember correctly his highest gear which he had been a bit sceptical about pulled. When I lowered him down I think I was shaking with adrenaline more than he was, and I hadn't been logging up the air miles!
We then spent a comedy hour trying to find how to scramble up on to the top to get ab down and retrieve the runners. We kept getting stuck in impenetrable brambles and nettles trying to find a way up. I eventually found a loose and vegetated scramble up - I should probably claim a FA because I reckon it was about diff, sort of like 20 mtrs of the worst tottery limestone ridge you've been on in the Alps transferred to Derbyshire and given its own nettle beds. Up at the top you can see these massive cracks where bits of the main wall are obviously separating slowly from the rest of Derbyshire! They really reminded me of crevasses forming as seracs get ready to fall down an icefall. It all felt a lot more "dynamic" an environment then you normally get outside of the high mountains, although some people say those cracks have been there for decades and don't seem to be getting bigger.
There are no good belays above the main wall so we had to tie two 50 mtrs ropes together to get them back to some bush in the brambles along way back that seemed like the strongest thing to ab off. Roger went down on the single rope and got his gear out, I released the ropes and climbed over a fence into a field and went for a jog for a km or so to get back to the quarry entrance to avoid needing to try and down scramble the sh*t we had come up! At that point it was getting dark so we left, me not actually having climbed anything. I haven't been back since, although I may go purely to try some of the easier sports routes there that don't involve topping out or going near the terrifying main wall.
