It was the Saturday of the annual dinner meet and it looked as if it could be the first dry day of the term. We reached the bottom of Dinas Mot at about 11am; not exactly an early start. After a brief look at the guidebook I spotted Diagonal, a three star HVS and suggested this to Vince without reading any more. He agreed to do it without reading the description either and with neither of us knowing anything about the route we took the wrong parts of my rack (we left most of the slings and screwgates behind but took several hexes and cams which were of no use of the first three pitches).
Then we got to the difficult bit: finding the route. The sketch in the guidebook looked absolutely nothing like the crag (as they always do) and all I could tell from it was the route started to the right of the route Neal was doing so I chose a random part of the crag which was in the right area and we started there.
"Who's leading the first pitch?".
A brief look at the description of the third pitch gave the answer. "You are", I replied.
So Vince started up this random bit of crag and didn't get very far. After about ten minutes of trying we began to realise this probably wasn't the right place; our suspicions were confirmed by a helpful bloke who knew the crag rather better than us and he pointed us in the right direction.
Vince made better progress but soon there were more shouts from the same helpful bloke when he went off route. After a few easy moves he reached some harder moves traversing across a green part of the crag. After a few minutes of nervous dithering he easily did these moves and then progressed past the belay. There were more shouts from the helpful bloke (who appeared to be expecting us to cock-up again). I relatively quickly did the easy moves, reached the scene of Vince's dithering and found out the helpful bloke was right again. The first pitch was rather interesting to second; the belay was a long way to my right and there were no runners between it and me. After a few minutes dithering I finally got going with a lot of encouragement from Vince and it proved to be easier than it looked: there was even reasonable friction on the green bits.
After consulting the guide book we got a reasonable idea of where the route went: up the green chimney about thirty feet above us. Getting there proved to be slightly harder; the guide book suggested that I could either climb the easier and almost unprotected way to the right or the harder way that finished by traversing under the roof to the chimney. The harder way looked impossible to me so I started up to the right. A few feet below the base of the chimney I saw what looked like a good nut placement while pulling myself over a roof, and quickly placed a nut. By the time I had done this I was unable to pull up and I was relieved when the nut held. The second attempt proved more successful, probably because I didn't spend ages hanging off the hold, and I moved up to the base of the chimney.
The third pitch was the one I wanted to avoid leading. Unfortunately, like the first pitch, the hard moves gave plenty of potential for a largish fall seconding them. Vince took a fair bit of convincing that the route really went where it did; he was eventually convinced because it could not possibly go anywhere else. He traversed out of sight and after a few complaints about the gear placements being crap and the lack of anything smaller than a rock 1 he appeared on what looked like a completely blank wall.
"Watch me"
This wasn't very reassuring; a couple of dodgy pieces of gear was all he had put it. He didn't fall though and it soon came to my turn. After the obligatory few minutes dithering, the traverse into the scoop turned out to be much easier than it looked and I quickly reached the first piece of gear. It didn't look as if it would hold a significant fall but it was a lot better than the next one. I went off route and this meant I could see the nut resting on a thin crack. It also meant that getting back on route was a bit difficult so I climbed up to the easy crack and then went back down to take out the other runner below the crack. During doing this every remaining runner on the pitch came out and half my rack slid down the rope into me. I climbed back up and this should have been the end of the difficulties; the last pitch was supposed to be short and easy.
I climbed up to the bottom of the crack; it looked steep but not particularly hard and I quickly reached a ledge about half way up. I tried to jam my hand in the crack and only succeeded in collecting a handful of slime. I repeated this a couple of times before deciding this wasn't going to work and remembered the other words of wisdom we were given: that the route was a bit hard when wet. Then I had what I thought was a good idea: Vince could do it. I belayed from the ledge and I soon found I was wrong; Vince couldn't do it either. With many points of aid, including the decrepit remains of a friend stuck in one of the cracks, he reached the top though. After much difficulty I removed the hex Vince had used with a largish piece of rock I climbed up from the ledge with. Someone belaying at the bottom of the crack looked a bit concerned about me waving the rock above his head.
We then climbed down a wet and slimy chimney back to the bottom of the crack and found that we had taken about six hours to do the route; so much for doing .html route that day.