People who rock
Sheila Hancock’s journey of discovery
None. That’s how much mountain experience I’ve had. When I got the part of Edie, I thought they’d mock it up. When I found out they expected me to climb Suilven, I really wasn’t sure. If you know Suilven, it’s not just climbing the mountain itself, you have to walk for miles to even get to the foot of it. I camped by a loch, after rowing across it. I’d never rowed or even camped before!
They told me once you start climbing Suilven, that’s your last chance to change your mind. You can’t stop, you have to keep going because a helicopter can only land on top. When I started going uphill, even that looked like a bloody great mountain. It wasn’t, of course, it was just the first slope. It was ordinary, nothing compared to what was to come.
The locals said that I was the oldest person to ever do it. There’s a ledge with a pile of stones which lots of people get to and don’t go any further. After the ledge you cross a terrifying path with a drop either side. I’d had a really emotional scene just before, where I tell Jonny that I’ve never been happy – any emotional scene like that, it takes it out of you – then we turned the corner and there it was. This path with sheer drops either side. They’d told me about it before, but I didn’t expect it to be 100 yards long and only a yard wide! I just whimpered. I said I couldn’t do it!
Eventually they got me across. Then I had to keep doing it, back and forth, for all the shots they wanted. By the end I was fine. I’m not good at looking down though, and the last climb to the top was a very rocky and steep scramble. There are easier ways to climb the mountain, but for the film this was the way they wanted. Going up was fine, but going back down you’ve no choice, you have to look down. It was scary!
I had two months to train. I couldn’t have done it straightaway. It’s scrambling and it’s tough. I had an ex-RAF guy training with me walking in Richmond Park trying to get me used to walking on rough ground. I went to the gym every day. When you get older coming up from a crouch becomes much more difficult, and on the mountain you have to heave yourself up all the time, so I had to do lots of thigh, buttock and knee strengthening.
Suilven was amazing. The most beautiful place on Earth. It’s my sort of place. And I’ve taken away a love of nature. I’m a city girl at heart. I’m interested in people, I look at people, and when I’m in nature I tended to look for traces of people – dry stone walls, pottery remains, well shafts – but out there was just extraordinary wilderness. I felt part of nature for the first time in my life.
I wasn’t just in nature, I was reliant on it. I was reliant on the rocks beneath my hands and feet not to give way. Every bit of me depended on them. I felt at one. On one difficult climby bit one of the team pointed down to a black patch in the rock. He said that bit of rock came from the start of the world. I mean what can you say? What can you say?! I loved all that.
I lay on my stomach on a slab of rock halfway up the mountain with the sun on my back, and thought ‘how marvellous’. You feel like an animal. My attitude to nature has changed. I’m not a lover of pretty villages and thatched cottages. I like rough and ready and wild. There’s something primitive about it. I didn’t feel diminished by it, but part of it.
I never want to camp again as long as I live! They need to invent toilets for women in the mountains. It’s alright for the boys. When I needed to go, there was nowhere to hide, everyone had to stop shooting and turn the other away.
A key message of the film is that it’s never too late to look for something to make you happy. Edie is a carer of a man she doesn’t love. When he passes away she thinks ‘I’m going to do something with my life’. For her that’s fulfilling a lifelong ambition to climb Suilven.
I know what it’s like to be a carer. I do a lot of work with a respite charity and I know what horror on Earth it can be. It can be difficult to step out of. I also work with children in schools and I see that if they are not careful they don’t really live and I think that’s what Edie is saying. To be in service to someone else and then to be set free.
A lot of people drift through life. I’m a great believer in taking an opportunity. Edie could have so easily ended up in a care home, but she took the opportunity to get on a train and change her life. There are so many stages in life, we have to continually adapt. For Edie at her age you are answerable to no one. If you fall off the mountain it doesn’t matter. You have no children to look after. No responsibilities. It’s a wonderful freedom. You’ve nothing to lose when you’re old.
T