rginns blog

Rather a mixed bag this week, I’ve been on the road for the last four days, but still managed to bunk off a bit early to go climbing. Firstly on Monday I was over Burnley way, so once I’d finished work I snatched an hour or so at Widdop. Unfortunately the whole place was sodden, and humid. I guess because it’s quite high up. The clouds were rolling in… The weather forecast proved to be predictably wrong, as it had spoken of dry warm weather.. ah well, I guess it’s the first of the autumn trip disappointments. Still, I decided not to waste the visit and take a look at all of the other bouldering I haven’t previously had a look at. I started over at the left of mystery buttress at a couple of good but hard lines on the vaguely overhanging reddish wall, which all look a bit hard to me. Then I worked right, following the problems in the Rockfax guide. Although a lot of the problems are in my range, the landings are often not ideal. Eventually I got to the Resevoir Dogs buttress – the chip

ok here goes, I re-rendered it in WMV let's see if this works... enjoy

I know you're all desparate to see the boopers crush, but although the vid has been edited and is ready to rock, my lack of knowledge regarding prem pro means that the file size is 366 meg, quite a lot for a minute and a half methinks... so until I can devote the time to working out how to re-render it in a smaller file size you'll have to wait. aha ha ha haha anyway on a slightly different note, i went out climbing early this morning as the weather was good, and Taffa fancied getting some ropework done. We headed to Widdop in the Big White Van and did a couple of routes on the Mystery buttress (original route I think and some sort of VS to the right...) the former was desparate, and involved some god-awful crawl akin to more speleological activity, but good value really and the second was much more straight forward. Although I've been thoroughly bouldering based recently it was kind of nice to be back on a rope, and the craic is always good. I guess it just reminded me of

I've been to Brownstones a couple of times this week, as the impending autumn weather is on it's way and the light is fast fading. Once the clocks go back it's game over for climbing after work, at least for non-lantern sessions. At the moment I can still get over an hour in though, so on Monday I went primarily to try the Sloper problem, probably my most frustrating aim so far, and after warming up at the pond end I cracked straight on with it. The move now feels really natural although I still can't get it. I keep trying to alter my technique, but to no avail so I soon gave up. Then I tried a few of the classics at the top end, and surprised myself by getting to the jugs on Obscenity which felt surprisingly easy. As I was flying solo though, and had no spotter I wimped out of the top out. Then exactly the same thing happened on Boopers, I got to the break easily, and latched the two crimps, but didn't feel confident topping out without a spotter, instead I had vis

no climbing news at this end for the time being as I am still recovering from last weekends misadventures. Well, this is a partial truth... I had planned on going to Brownstones this morning, but that plan failed at around twenty past ten last night due primarily to Plymouth Gin. This leads me nicely onto this latest tactic: instead of drinking beer, my tipple of choice is now Gin and slim-line tonic. How gay, you may think. Well, the outrageous camp factor is counterbalanced by the reduced calorific content of gin, which is around a quarter of that of beer. So I don't care. Excellent. On the weight front, the extra cv sessions in the last couple of weeks appear to be having the desired effect as I've lost 7lbs in the last 3 weeks. I'm now on target for losing a stone in 8 weeks and due to the slow nature I'll hopefully be able to keep it off over the winter, and if everything goes to plan this should translate into climbing prowess durng the cool weather... watch this