It felt out of place, leaving the pub car park with axes and crampons. My B3 boots hit the pebbles on the beach, slipped on the seaweed and got sprayed by the seawater, it was a weird place for mountaineering gear to be.
Our initial plan was to climb “The Tube” our 
time window and the tide didn’t match and instead we where forced to climb the cliffs east of Margrets bay. With no guide book we looked at any obvious lines from below until we decided on one. With the routes changing all the time due to rockfall, most of the routes in the guidebook had changed since they where first ascended anyway.
Our route, started with a ramp up to a grassy ledge at about 15m. I noticed pockets from
previous axe placements, scratches from crampons and holes from warthogs- the only usable piece of protection on this medium. At least now I knew this was an actual route. I didn’t know what to expect, whether it would be tooling or swinging for placements. The first few sunk in like real ice, it was like dense clay, but as the route progressed the placements varied, dinner plating rock, friable, loose, axes occasionally sparking and ricocheting off flint. Placements had to be chosen carefully and warthog placements even more so, to increase the chances of them holding a fall.
I had 2 warthogs for the whole route, I had to make them count. I had brought Gaz up to the grass ledge so I could retrieve the warthog I used in the first 15m. Gaz made an anchor by hammering in his axes into the chalk and chicken scratched out a ledge for his feet.
I was off again, the easier angled terrain was worse, it collected soil, plants grow and the roots make the rock so loose and dust like. My right foot was slowly peeling off lumps of grass, while my left was scratching make its own ledge to stand on. I put a sling round a sea cabbage, for no other reason then physiological protection, and carried on to better rock. The ramp lead on for 15m before I put a warthog in an existing hole, but hammered it home a few extra inches. An overhanging bulge above me made me tense, the cracks and foliage just screamed loose rock to me. I could see a few old axe placements, but with one more warthog for the next 40m I felt I was now in over my head. It turned out later we where on “the groove VI.”
My white cliffs experience was over, I had a taste of it, it was now time to trust that warthog and ab off. It was an adventure non the less, an oxymoron of super low quality rock and surprising high quality climbing, it’s uniqueness it what drew me there, and although I wasn’t to sure about its use as a training ground for winter terrain, it surprised me how similar it is. I won’t be back in a rush, but on day when I fancy something different, out of the ordinary and a guaranteed adventure I’ll plan a trip back, but I’ll look at the tide tables a bit closer, and maybe bring a few more warthogs.