Any help much appreciated

You will find some great answers for your questions here. Relatively new to roses myself may I ask a couple more questions? Folks here can offer up some great experience but may wish to know the following first:

What kind of fence are we talking about? How long is it? Do you have a picture (really helpful).

What color or colors are you looking for?

How long do you want your climber to be? You can get everything out there from a modest climber to a beast that must be trimmed with a whip and a chair! Depends on what you're after.

What kind of exposure will it get? Partial sun? Full sun! Brutal sun? Humid? What zone are you in?

Just some things to ponder. Defining a couple of those points will help you get the best answers for your questions.

Finally bear in mind that whatever climber or climbers you do end up they can take their time to develop. So if after year two your climber is healthy but not a vigorous bloomer it may still be settling in. A lesson that can be hard to accept if you are impatient like I am.

From my personal experience and if you can get this one in the UK you may look at Joseph's Coat. More of a rambler than a climber if we are talking about say a stockage fence and you can train it JC is gorgeous.

Hope this helps.

Kate

The vendor you consider purchasing from lists a lot of once bloomers that can grow really huge. So, I think you should first decide if you consider once bloomers or prefer repeat bloomers (I have a small garden, so I stick to repeat bloomers)
Some climbers, like Cecile Brunner needs a very heavy strong supporting structure so in that case you should know that your fence is strong enough for such a vigorous rose otherwise in a few years the fence can collapse.

There are some beautiful repeat blooming old roses listed like Gloire de Dijon, Lady Hillingdon and a few others I forgot by the time I got back to this page. I love Gloire de Dijon and grow Lady H the bush – the question here is how serious problem balling is in your special microclimate. (Lady H., for example, balls for me too often but this rose)

Of the moderns I love and grow Compassion and as far as I know it is a very popular rose in England. Healthy foliage, very fragrant, bloom color change from pinkish apricot to cream or even stronger peach-apricot.
I try to grow Penny Lane and I am told it has much better colors in England than in my hot and humid climate where it bleaches out.

Etoile de Holland is very fragrant dark red, so that would be a nice choice.

Maybe first you should decide, as Kate suggested, which colors you would prefer and if they would look close together or not. How many climbers would you need to cover your fence?

Hopefully Jon of Wessex checks in and if he does, he can give you the best and most professional advice, alas he frequents the antique rose forum and not very often posts here.

Nonetheless we are happy to help you as much as we can if we know a bit more about your backyard, sun-shade situation and the number of climbers you intend to buy.

Simply trying to assist John with his question. Since I live in CA and not England I don't know what his growing conditions are. On that note I rather doubted it was a little mini-Arizona micro climate but some clarification was needed.

Kate