Chris Woodhead was a fanatical mountaineer. When tiring of the pressure of educational politics, he and his wife, Christine, moved to a cottage in Wales, on the near inaccessible slopes of his beloved Cnicht, in Snowdonia. He dreamed of climbing the days away. Yet within a year of arriving, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. I went with him on one of his last walks up the mountain, and recall him remarking that every climber wants to die on a mountain. I said I would always help him die on Cnicht.
As the illness worsened he and Christine divided their time between Wales and Cornwall, eventually retreating briefly to Ludlow, Shropshire, and then to Presteigne, Powys. To the end he retained his fanatical love of poetry – especially the work of his friend Geoffrey Hill, whom he could make comprehensible by the manner of his reading him out loud. He also retained his appreciation of landscape and his irrepressible zest for controversy. No minute with Chris ever went un-discussed. The only thing that bored him was agreement. He climbed an argument as he climbed a mountain, because it was there.
