Well to start with you need rather more than five pea vines if you are expecting to get a good crop! There are lots of different varieties do you want an early cropping pea an main crop or a late main crop? You will need to grow a good long row to get more than 3 meals from!

How about alderman, it's a climbing pea, It's a good cropper, but a row would do better than 5 plants.

I grew the slightly rude-sounding Hurst Greenshaft last year. They were very sweet and tasty, so much so that I ate every single one raw, rather than cooking them. They suffered when I went on holiday in August though - doh!

thanks everyone, as you can tell i'm still new to all this. i may be able to plant some peas in another area this year. When you say a row, how long ideally should the row be?

2ndhand, i thought all peas were climbing peas?

I grow Alderman as they grow to 5 or 6 feet, some only grow to about 3 feet. The need good canes and nets though to support them. Lower growing ones can manage with pea sticks.
I think if you grow tall ones you get more peas for the space they take up.
Grow as long a row as you have room for. Ideally you could sow two rows, a month apart to give you a sucession but you may not have room for that. Once they start keep picking.

I would agree as long a row as you can manage and preferably more than one. Haven't tried Alderman but if it grows that tall could be useful.