I did a lot of falling last weekend. They say if you aren’t falling you aren’t trying hard enough, which I choose to believe because otherwise I’m just a terrible climber.

Scrapes and bruises aside, there’s no feeling like reaching a hold you thought was beyond your capability or getting past that nasty bit of rock that had previously defied your persistence. It’s a wonderful cocktail of frustration, elation and adrenaline; I’m new to climbing but I feel like a dog that’s tasted blood – not just addicted, but desperate for more.

The “climbing cocktail” is full of contradictions. One minute I was ecstatic at having made it past a tricky, technical section, the next I was slapping the flat, featureless wall with frustration. It’s super-cool and super-geeky at the same time – dangerous, exciting and hugely technical. I didn’t realise just how much there was to it until a friend told me about the hours he’s spent on Youtube looking at finger-jam techniques, or until I googled “climbing equipment” for birthday present ideas (30th May, just putting it out there) and was faced with a vast range of unfathomable objects.

Technically I know very little but I’m keen to learn. Stripped to the bare bones, there’s “sport” climbing and “trad” climbing. “Sport” involves clipping into metal bolts along pre-determined routes up the wall, and “trad” involves sticking your own lumps of metal into cracks in the wall in such a way that they’ll hold fast if you fall. It’s a total mind game.

It’s also an entirely different kettle of fish to indoor climbing. There’s something so wild, raw and real about the feel of the unforgivingly cold, hard rock under your fingers, and surrendering yourself to the mercy of the sun, wind and fog is oddly liberating. There’s been no human interference with the surface you’re clinging on to, beyond the route-setter who put the bolts in the wall. Nobody chose where to put the cracks, holds and features, and nobody will choose when or how the next bit of rock will crumble. It’s an exhilarating thought.

I’m fortunate enough to have climbing-savvy friends willing to lend me their patience and equipment, so all I own for now is a harness and a pair of shoes (plus a single quickdraw and wallnut that I was lucky enough to find at the bottom of a cliff). I’ve been down to the Dorset coast a couple of times and I love it.

I had planned to write about my (limited) climbing experiences rather than climbing in general, but I’ll do that another time. Time has run away and I’m off to the gym to make amends for the scones, cake and trifle I went to town on at my gran’s (pretty crazy, thanks for asking) 94th birthday tea yesterday.

So what was the biggest fall I took at the weekend? Not the repeated slips off the same, infuriating, polished bit of rock. Not the sideways, double-overhang, twelve-foot, back-first crash into the wall. I’m cringing as I write this disgustingly clichéd sentence, but I think it was probably falling in love with climbing itself, and all the falls that come with it. Climbing is the perfect metaphor for life in general – it’s not how many times you fall, but about how many times you pull yourself back up.