An early walk with Wainwright was either along the Troutbeck fells or perhaps up the Tongue from Troutbeck Park. I can’t now remember which or whether Alf had some particular reason for going there. We went in my car and eventually came to a wall over which I easily scrambled but Wainwright refused to follow. I pointed out to him that this was the easiest and shortest route and that if he didn’t go this way he would have a long walk round. But he refused to follow. So I went on and waited for him, with increasing impatience, for about twenty minutes. ‘I don’t climb stone walls,’ he said when he eventually caught up.

Another outing was when he asked me whether I would take him to Dove’s Nest caves on Rosthwaite Fell near Glaramara. He was, I believe, studying that area for one of his guides and wanted to see the caves where I had often climbed. I think I took a torch and some candles. The caves are reached from Borrowdale by way of Comb Gill, and the entrance, where you need lights and some idea of what you’re doing, is about twenty feet or so up the crag–a very easy scramble, hardly a scramble at all. My idea was for Wainwright to reach the entrance and possibly put his nose inside to see. No more. I would point out the climbs and we could then descend.

But as soon as Alf saw the simple scramble that a child could do he said, very emphatically, ‘I’m not going up there!’ However, knowing Alf’s antipathy to rock, I had anticipated this, producing a rope I had secreted in my rucksack, but Alf recoiled from this as if it had been a poisonous snake. So, he never saw the caves and they are not described, in detail, in his guide.