Nick White:
Time was when things were peaceful in Devon and a sleepy quietude pervaded the wooded dells, high moors and pungent grottoes of the sea cliffs. Until, that is, Dave Thomas let out the most spine chilling and blood curdling scream for a top rope ever heard in creation!!!! Visibly shaken and hanging onto life by the thinnest of threads (a sling that has been in situ for nigh on a decade and a half) our crazed hero had reached what can only be described as an terminal impasse. What had started out s a light hearted (!?!) photo session of Dave soloing Call to Arms (E4 5c), on the Sanctuary Wall, became an epic fight for life. Even Glenn Robbins had to put away his sharp-pointy-stick - for prodding cowering subjects into ever more fearsome surroundings - and go to the aid of Dave's now tortuously pain- wracked body. Twenty minutes of negotiating loose, steep and thorn ridden slopes saw Glenn manage to get the required lifeline into position, only to find that it hung fifteen feet out from the stricken soloist!!! The ensuing moan from below, like the song of a dying whale, heralded a comeback bout that even Rocky Balboa would have deemed impossible. Out of sheer desperation Dave launched his now rigored frame into what must surely have
seemed like its final tumultuous death throe. By dint of sheer willpower alone he clawed his way to the belay, the hummingbird of "The Only Blasphemy" fame hovering just in front of his nose. Alas for poor Dave the story didn't end there, as he could not remember the way off, and spent a further hour trying to reverse the maze like first pitch of the ironically name Incubus. [1]
References
[1] Mountain Issue 140 (1991), page 16