Text 1: Sixty metres of nothing, by Kirsty Lennard

An original contemporary blog.

The line is a strip of nylon webbing two and a half centimetres wide, stretched sixty metres between two limestone towers. Below it is a drop of about eighty metres to the river. I am wearing a harness clipped to the line by a short rope and a metal ring, the system is designed to catch a fall. I expect to drop a short distance, swing underneath like a sock on a washing line, and have to climb back on. I know all this. My body does not believe a word of it.

For two years I have practised on lines a foot above the grass in the park, falling off in front of dog walkers and small children. Today is my first long line at height.

Sitting on the line at the start is the worst part. Standing up on a ribbon that bends and sways under you, with nothing to hold, feels like trying to stand up on a snake. My legs shake so badly that the whole line starts to bounce, and the bouncing makes my legs shake more. My friend Jo, on the cliff behind me, says only, ‘Breathe out. Look at the anchor.’

So I look at the anchor, a small silver bolt on the far tower, and I walk. Every step is a negotiation. The wind pushes the line one way and I lean the other. Halfway across, a pair of jackdaws fly underneath me, and I make the mistake of watching them, and for a moment the whole valley tilts. I wobble, crouch, grip the line with one hand and stay on. Then I stand again, slowly, and keep going.

When I touch the far tower I hug it like an old friend. I am shaking, sunburnt and laughing, and I cannot remember a single thought from the last twenty minutes except the bolt. People ask me why I do this. The honest answer is that for twenty minutes there is nothing in the world except the next step, and I have never found that anywhere else.

Text 2: The crossing of the gorge, by A Special Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This report appeared in a provincial newspaper in 1863, after a professional rope-walker crossed a river gorge in front of a large crowd.

Never, we believe, has the gorge witnessed such a multitude as assembled there on Monday afternoon to see Signor Cavalli, the celebrated rope-walker, cross from one side to the other upon a single rope. From an early hour every road into the town was choked with carriages, carts and persons on foot, and by three o’clock both edges of the gorge, and every tree and rock that afforded a view, were black with spectators, to the number, it is said, of twenty thousand.

The rope, which is of hemp and some three inches thick, was stretched between two great posts at a height of perhaps two hundred feet above the river. At a quarter past three the Signor appeared, dressed in pink silk spangled with silver, and carrying a long balancing pole. He bowed to the crowd, stepped upon the rope, and walked out over the gorge as calmly as a gentleman walks down Regent Street.

When he had gone about half way, a gust of wind came up the gorge and the rope began to swing. A great groan went up from the crowd. Ladies covered their faces; one fainted outright. The Signor stopped, lowered himself until he sat astride the rope, and there remained, perfectly still, for nearly a minute, while twenty thousand people held their breath. Then he rose again, and, as if to show his contempt for the danger, completed the crossing at a run.

The cheering that followed was such as we have never heard. Yet we confess to some unease. A man who risks his life so that a crowd may be thrilled is very brave, but it may be asked what the crowd is, that it pays to watch him do it. Had the wind been a little stronger on Monday, the cheering would have been of a very different kind.

Both of these texts are about walking on a rope high above the ground.

Compare:

• what the writers say about walking on a rope at great height
• how the writers present these experiences to readers

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