The sea was rough. The boat crashed repeatedly into the next in the endless phalanx of waves, before dropping sharply from every crest, the action bucking me from my seat as the boat dropped away below me before the cycle repeated and I was slammed down once more. I took to gripping the underside of the wooden bench to hold myself in place, my hand between my knees crimping the underside of the wooden slat upon which I perched. The boat’s motion making it like a “repeaters” style finger-strength training session on the Beastmaker; clench to prevent take-off, then relax while you can before clenching again, and again, and again.

Molly bounced alongside me, head lolling with the boats gyrations and face downturned to shield her from the sheets of ocean spray that poured from the canopy above directly onto her sunken head. As she stooped lower and lower, lolling against me, I realised, to my amazement that she had somehow managed to nod off amidst the salty maelstrom of our pre-dawn rollercoaster.

After the longest repeaters session of my life, we finally reached the shelter of the Lundy harbour and scrambled unsteadily ashore. Weaving our way up the jetty, we listened to the eery and mournful song of the resident seals. A ghostly welcome to their isolated domain.

Hours later, as I climbed the first routes of our trip, I was struck by the encroaching sea grass that bracketed the routes. It acted like a pair of guard rails for me as I felt my way up the second pitch of Centaur. With Molly’s view totally obscured, I couldn’t get any guidance from her so having a runway of clear rock to follow kept me on the straight and narrow.

The next day, we decided to make our pilgrimage to The Devil’s Slide. It is not my style, as the principal challenge is finding the footholds, which is much more problematic when you are unable to see them. Coupled with small and infrequent gear it doesn’t play to my strengths, but it is an awesome piece of rock, and smeary foothold by smeary foothold I gradually padded my way up and across Lundy’s most famous route.

A few days later, I decided it was time to attempt Destiny. When I choose to try a route at my limit, I usually want to get straight on with it, often waking early with the bit between my teeth. Having hassled Molly, barely caffeinated, out of the campsite, I laboured across the island under the weight of my rucksack and the gargantuan abseil rope I had brought.

Molly led the first pitch to a grassy ledge where I took the rack and headed upwards into the second and crux pitch. I jammed efficiently up the start of the main crack. Reaching the crux where the crack arcs to the right, becoming horizontal. I found the moves powerful, and it was difficult to engage my feet on the insecure footholds. I realised I could not dally here, quickly slamming home a Dragon. I lunged right, and kept going finding, to my relief, a widening in the crack with good jams and an awkward and imperfect rest.

I hung there, releasing each hand in turn, redistributing fatigue from my arms to my core that was taking the strain to grant my arms the reprieve.

I thought about the route name and its aptness, conjuring associations with Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck. Supposedly, she would determine people’s future by spinning her eponymous “wheel of fortune”, the catch being, that like me, she is blind. It is from her that the concepts of fate and destiny emerge. Fate is the future scenario which is preordained. Whereas, destiny relates to the present, and each cumulative decision previously made which leads to the current moment.

The threads of meditation unravelled, and my mind snapped back to the climbing, squashing the philosophical conjecture down into my subconscious as I hung in the poor and strenuous rest, slowly, oh so slowly, bleeding away the pump from my engorged forearms. My attention back on track, time to return to the fray.

My fingers quested up, finding, to my relief a positive crimp for my left hand. I drew on my rejuvenated forearms to make the last hard moves and reach the top of a jutting pedestal. The physical challenge now over, the concluding obstacle was puzzling my way through the maze of overhang capped ledges, which I navigated to emerge onto the complex and insecure clifftop. Unable to savour my successful on-sight until I had inelegantly fumbled enough to locate a solid anchor.

As I sat belaying amidst the grass and boulders, I listened to the rumble of the waves on the encroaching tide below and my mind wandered, picking up the threads of my earlier reflection on destiny and fate.

I often think of fate personified as Fate, one of the more powerful gods in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, which I had avidly devoured as a teenager when my eyes were still good enough to read, admittedly with difficulty and a huge magnifying glass.

In Discworld, canon, and in a wink to Einstein, Fate plays games against the other gods, notably The Lady, who is Discworld’s analogue of Fortuna, and their game manifests on the playing board of the Disc through the lives of their mortal playing pieces. The threads reknitted as the allegory crystalised in my mind.

I love climbing, the places, the people, the challenge and problem solving but also the self-determination. It separates the concepts of fate and destiny. I think that, in climbing your choices matter, it is rejection of a deterministic attitude where lives run on train tracks, and we only have the illusion of choice. Where your fate is already set. Whereas Destiny is about the present and the myriad choices made to reach it. Each hold selected, every piece of gear picked and placed, the beta sequence committed to, and every quantum of effort and willpower applied.

I believe, it was my choices that got me here atop one of my hardest routes to date and for me in that success there is catharsis. I know my disability makes climbing far harder for me than it is for most. You could say that, through my genetics, Fate had intervened and attempted to block off climbing as an option for me. So, every time I go climbing, especially when I attempt to on-sight, I rebel against those imposed constraints. Somewhere in my psyche my inner teenager smiles laconically before defiantly giving Fate the middle finger.

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