I once heard of an interesting way to make a quick decision. If you can't decide between two things, they say you should toss a coin. Not because the coin will give you the right answer, but because as it's in the air, you'll realise which way you're hoping it will land.
The other day, I was wracking my brains trying to think of my favourite ever place, ever. Which is kind of silly really, I was clearly over thinking it. Like with the coin, you should instinctively know these things. And of course I did, but was subconsciously discounting it as not being, well, good enough. How daft is that? Like I was looking down on myself.
Anyway, just off the coast of Weymouth, lies the isle of Portland, connected to the mainland by Chesil Beach, beloved of geography teachers, as a classic, and huge, example of longshore drift.
Portland itself has a bleak kind of rugged beauty, and is a very well known area for sport climbing (sport, as opposed to 'traditional', climbing is where people have been up the routes with big drills, and inserted metal bolts you clip into as you go up). I have been to Portland many times, and spent many a happy day especially in the Blacknor South area, scrambling between the low graded (easier), imaginatively named areas. Lunar Park, Triple Slabs, Diamond Boulders, but in particular the Fallen Slab.
Feet from the sea, there is nothing there apart from, well, great big rocks. The arete itself makes you feel particularly exposed, but the exhilarating setting means you - and absolutely everyone else - climb it every time you come to Portland. To be halfway up that route is to be without a doubt at my favourite spot in the world. You are climbing right on the edge of a rock face, thinking carefully about clipping the next bolt with the sea birds crying and if you're lucky spray on your ankles.
Once, probably after the 15th time or so I climbed it, as I eased back to the ground I realised why I liked climbing, and this particular route so much - because when you're up there, particularly when you're leading and therefore don't have a rope above you, only below, you are so focused, you don't think about anything else - not work, not the mortgage, nothing. It's meditation, psychotherapy and healthy introspection all rolled into one. Tony Soprano didn't need all that time with the shrink - he just needed a weekend with Climbing Dave and me on Portland.
