“This is going to sound very obvious, but it gives you a sense of perspective” - Night climbing in Cambridge.

Yeah, I suppose I have been worried at points. 

I’m talking to Timothy E. Ryder about ‘night climbing’ in Cambridge. 

To my knowledge, it’s been a while since anyone’s been sent down for night climbing, but there is a history of that. 

Is it illegal? 

Technically it’s a civil offence rather than a criminal one, so you can’t be arrested for it. But you can be fined. What’s tricky is doing it in the context of Cambridge. I’ve done it in [REDACTED] and it was fine, but the main threat is porters: you’re most likely to be recognised by porters at your own college. I started in my first term and never encountered anyone. It was only in the very last term when there was more of a political motive to lots of the climbing.

Timothy E. Ryder is a made-up name. We’re discussing the 1937 book, ‘The Night Climbers of Cambridge’, by Whipplesnaith – another made-up name. From the pseudonyms, to the supposed existence of exclusive societies, night climbing is a tradition rooted in anonymity and cloaked in secrecy. Much of the mythology surrounding night climbing originates from this book.

It’s a collection of genres. It’s a manual, it’s very instructional, it tells you what to wear and it starts with the best routes for people who want to try it. But it’s also quite poetic, so every chapter starts with a quote from literature which he very ambitiously associates with night climbing, and by the final chapter it’s really quite philosophical. It’s trying to explain why people do it and it’s a beautiful piece of writing

Does it still stand the test of time? Or are the routes it describes by now largely defunct? 

There has been an evolution, you can visually see the history in the architecture. There’s this kind of battle in the architecture: if you go and look at King’s Chapel, there are lightning rods which have been moved because they used to be useful to cling on to; you can see anti-climbing spikes that have been installed. There’s a bit in the book when he talks about this, saying, “where they put up spikes, we will file them away”.

It must be quite a widespread thing, then, to draw this kind of response. But when people talk about a whole “society”, is that misguided? 

So, as far as I’m aware, there’s no society. And most of the interviews say the same thing. There’s this moment at the end of the book where he writes, “there are others to follow; at this very moment there may be a dozen climbers on the buildings of Cambridge. They do not know each other; they are unlikely to meet. In twos and threes they are out in search of adventure, and in search of themselves”. So as far as I’m aware it’s always been self-motivated individuals. It becomes quite tricky when there are lots of you. That was one of the main problems when we were trying to do more political stuff to do with Palestine, it didn’t work out in bigger groups, and then if security arrived there would be a pool of people waiting below a drainpipe.

Have you ever been caught? Or have you ever come close to being caught?

There have been a few moments when I’ve had to run away. Often what you end up doing is just staying on the roof, looking at the stars for quite a while, hoping that people will just go away. The amazing thing is that usually people never look up. It’s quite surreal. I’ve only once been spotted by pedestrians: I think it was the night when I went on to bump into you as I was walking back, it was an incredibly densely foggy night, and I had been trying to find a way onto King’s Chapel. There were two people on the street below, and I think one of them thought I was, um, trying to take my own life and was screaming up at me. So, if this is being published, my sincerest apologies to them.

Hopefully they’ll see this. It may not be a conventional, organised society, but with the book, do you feel in dialogue with that, like you’re part of some wider community? 

I do definitely think that’s a reason why people do it. I think people come to Cambridge and are looking for secret societies, or things that have that air of Cambridge mystery. A way of making yourself part of that heritage is… saying you’ve stood on top of a pinnacle and scratched your name into a spot where only a few others have, that’s a way of feeling like you’re part of something. But I think most of the “society” stuff is self-mythologising. That’s a huge thing with night climbing, there are all these kinds of anecdotes you hear variations of from different people. 

Image taken by Timothy E.Ryder

If that’s why some people get into it, what’s the reason you did?

I think it was definitely a large part of why I started doing it … almost an obsession with Cambridge of the past, wanting to feel part of it. But I think what you get out of it when you do it is almost the opposite of that. It is a very ‘Cambridge’ thing to do, but what I used to enjoy about it was that it was an escape out of Cambridge. This is going to sound very obvious, but it gives you a sense of perspective. It’s a really nice way to clear your head from small things like essays or relationships, or anything going on. It all seems smaller when you’re looking down from above and worried about slipping off a building. 

If there is a society aspect to it, then it’s probably through the CU Climbing Society. From what I’m aware, night climbing was initially just a way for people to get into colleges, when they used to lock the gates at 10pm. It started to get formalised after this thing called the ‘Golden Age of Alpinism’ in the late 19th century, where all these peaks get climbed within 10 years. And that made its way to Cambridge, and so the first people who publish stuff [on urban climbing] are alpinists who have scaled these mountains and now look at Cambridge in the same way. I imagine the highest concentration of night climbers will always have been part of the climbing society.  Also, by the ‘60s, it gets more technical, which is probably more proof of the climbing society being involved. In the ‘60s book they talk about harnesses and getting ropes out, taking on trickier routes. And I think they see themselves as being innovators in that. 

Image from the second night climbing book in 1970 , ‘Cambridge in 1970’, taken by Kit Bashaarat

Yes. It’s not anywhere near as literary as the first, but it is quite appealing in its innocence. It’s just a group of students who are doing lots of climbing in the ‘60s and writing about it. Also, it culminates with them putting up a huge ‘Peace in Vietnam’ banner on King’s Chapel. Politics and people putting things up, that’s another big motivation, I think. 

Image of ‘Peace in Vietnam’ banner sourced from https://www.insectnation.org/nightclimbing/camnightclimbing.html

I wasn’t here last year, but there was a big effort to replicate similar feats for Palestine, right? 

Yeah. The last one you would remember would be a big ‘Slava Ukraini’ one in 2021. But I don’t think there have been any particularly successful ones since then. But it’s an interesting contrast to the anonymity of it being a secret enterprise. Because it’s a way to create publicity. There are a lot of very political people who did it. In the ‘30s there were banners about Ethiopia [protesting the Italian invasion of what was at the time called Abyssinia]. Someone got sent down – Nares Craig, a pacifist and conscientious objector who wrote a book called ‘Memoirs of a Thirties Dissident’, and he hoisted an effigy of King George VI onto King’s Chapel. He called it a way of “mocking the pantomime of royalty”, a response to the pervasive bunting during the coronation. So, there’s definitely a tradition. And the most night climbs I did was in that final term, where people really made an effort to find each other and coordinate, collaborate for political reasons, for Palestine. We just didn’t manage it very well. And it was a lot trickier with CCTV. Almost every climb I have done has been in front of a CCTV camera and you just have to assume they won’t check it unless they have a reason to. 

When you’re trying to create publicity, that’s when CCTV cameras might be checked, which can get a bit hairy. So, I’m going to stop pressing Timothy E. Ryder at this point. But he’s already gone, out of the window and into the night.