rginns blog

Tuesday I had an hour before tea so popped down to Chumbly Jumbly for a brief totter on the rock. after a bit of traversing, I repeated my dyno as a double which felt nicer than going with the right. Then I got onto Clown's pocket, the overhang, and got easily to my previous high point, but it's definitely going to be a pop for me, as I just can't reach the right hand crimp. I'll need to tape my left fingers as the pocket is really sharp. The crag is looking better in general. Wednesday I did nothing as I didn't get back from work until 10:45 pm...rubbish. Today, Thursday , as I was late back last night, I decided to head out somewhere before going to work. The plan was initially Brownstones, if not then Snakey B wall, Wilton 1. I got up to Brownstones at about 8:45 and the weather was not great, that drizzly crappy non-rain that you tend to get on the moors. I went in the quarry anyway on the off chance that something was climbable, but alas it was all wet. This wa

I set off this morning at ten past seven which under normal circumstances would have got me to Brownstones just before half past seven. The idea was to carry on with what I started last night. In the event, some cretin decided to roll his van on junction 6 of the M61 taking out two lanes, so the traffic was horrendous getting through Westhoughton. What should have taken about 4 minutes at that time of the morning took 50. I ended up getting to Brownstones at about 8:15. Not Happy. Ironically there were temporary traffic lights 100 yards before Brownstones, just to add to the annoyance! Anyway that left me with only 20 minutes before I had to leave for work. I jumped straight on the POnd traverse, taking it from watery arete as the pond side is still a little mushy. Much to my surprise I managed to get round mantelstrug to two step first go - this part has always been fairly tricky for me, but today it felt easy. After that, I had a look at Verdinand. I've always been a little retic

Today I wasn't sure where I'd be due to various circumstances. Therefore although I put my stuff in the car I didn't plan on going anywhere. After work however the weather seemed great so I thought I'd go up to Brownstones for an hour after work. The slimer slab has had a clear shower of volcanic ash and as such is really gritty and slippy. Hopefully after a couple of showers no lasting damage will be done. Every time I go to Brownstones I seem to see another broken hold or damage to the rock. There appears to be a broken hold on Verdigris, and Mantelstrug has had another chunk taken out of it. I warmed up on the pond traverse and then Kip turned up. I wasn't expecting to see him actually, but he showed me a couple of good eliminates on Moss wall. After more bumbling around on the traverse I got onto Dynamic eliminate (Font 6a). I thought i did this last year, but I was using the big hold, not the smaller crimp on the left. Anyway, this felt too hard last year just

Sunday 25th April 2010. Today was the clean up day at Wilton, part of the ongoing work happening there, and as I had the morning free I decided to head down and get stuck in. Les and a few other usuals were present,Dave Mann, Bernie, and faces I knew but didn't know the name of. I spent a couple of hours sawing down rhododendrons, picked a shit load of litter up, and then dug away overgrown heather at the bottom of grey wall. I saw a couple of interesting and as yet overgrown lines that may need exploring. One looks very hard indeed, not to mention high.. Les spent some time with a pick-axe hacking at the short arete opposite the main face. This was exploratory work to see whether it would be worth excavating this side to create a new face/boulder. Unfortnately the rock seemed to run out about a metre down, and further along is very broken anyway. Looks like this may be a dead end. However it would be great in the long term to get rid of what appear to be the spoil cones around t

Thursday 22nd April 2010 Originally I was supposed to be heading over to Stronstrey Bank to spot GCW on his project, but as he nailed it last night ( David Vetter , 7a+, nice medical reference...) I suggested heading over to Craig Y longridge for some unrelenting steepness. G seemed keen, but Taff has a knackered arm and Tom was incommunicative. I got there about 6 and wandered down to the crag. The weather was great, nice and sunny, not too cold. the good thing about CYL is that it is in the shade anyway, so should make a good hot weather venue. I've not been there for nearly 2 years so I was expecting to get spanked. There were quite a few people there and I noticed that since I was last here they've fenced off about 5 yards back along the entire crag, and the chalets that had just bases when I was here last are now fully built and had people in. The view was much better before they built these monstrosities, but at least the future of CYL is now secure. I warmed up on some o

Went down to the not-so-secret-crag-any-more to have a look at the work that I heard has recently been done. It's been a few weeks since I've been down, and the difference is quite big actually. There has been a lot more cleaning done on the right hand side and a really nice slanting crackline has appeared left of the waterfall exactly opposite Clowns Pocket. It was clearly chalked up adn no doubt has been climbed. looks like a short but sharp jamming VS. The crag is really starting to look like it'll be a nice venue, it's just the waterfall that is the real pain. I reclimbed a couple of problems I'd done ages ago, Tadpole, a crimpy 4c and Asturias, 4a. No doubt these will have already been claimed, but they're nice problems so I emailed them off to G anyway. We'll see if they make it in the new guide. There is some potential for some really thin slab climbing which could be quite hard, and some routes through overlaps - It's still a relatively friable p

I read on the Unmitigated Krap Channel (tm) that the project I've been trying has been climbed. The problem has been named Clowns Pocket (English 6b) and involves quite gymnastic highish bouldering around an overhang. Although I can't pretend I'm not a bit gutted, that's the nature of projects. Noone owns the rock or has bagsy over a problem. It was a good effort, and I still want to get it done, it'll still be a good route. Doesn't mean I'm not pissed off I didn't get it done before though. Tonight to work off some steam I went over to Brownstones and met Kip and Andrew, Kip showed me a couple of problems that Darren had shown him on the Ash Pit Slabs. They're good little eliminates, and it's nice to try something new. Other than that I failed on Satisfying Sloper Problem again, as usual. I think I'm going to have to resign myself to the fact this is morpho, for me anyway. Not sure why I'm posting this, All in all it's a bit rubbish

Wednesday 14th April. Today was a long day. I had to drive down to Stevenage, but I was hoping to leave as early as possible and stop off at the Roaches on the way back. I'd finished my meeting by about 2pm adn headed back up. I put Upper Hulme in as a destination on the way back home, but for some reason it went straight past it - by the time I'd realised I was near on in Macclesfield. I had a choice of another 45 minutes extra driving, or just sacking it. So I sacked it. A shame as I was looking forward to it.Shoulder aching a bit today though so might have been a blessing. A brief look in to Wilton 2 and I saw that the cool little overhang near the entrance on the right has been filled in. only a sitstart 5a has been lost, but it was quite a cool problem... On the upside, I visited a customer's factory that makes space rockets today. Very cool. Oh, and the practical cheesemaking book arrived. woo!

Tuesday 13th April. Yesterday I woke up early to glorious sunshine. I had planned on heading over to Healey with the Lanky Dab man and co., but in the event the combined drive and walk was a bit too far as I was somewhat skiving and needed to be in the office by 10:30 really. Wilton it was then. Again. Today I decided to adopt a new strategy; treat everything as 4 grades easier than it is and therefore well within my capability and crank it out. i.e. pretend I was back in font, where I was burned off pretty much everything above 5+... Things didn't start off well. Firstly I noticed the bottom car park has seen the attention of fly tippers, just to add to the rest of the crap there. The whole area is looking shit at the minute. When I got in the quarry I was disappointed to find a huge turd at the bottom of the Snakey B wall, along with a pair of socks and a some fag ends. Nice. Thanks, whoever that was. I removed the turd with a couple of big rocks and placed another rock on top of

When we headed out here the aim was to get anything done above 6. Of course a week before going the shoulder pretty much put paid to that plan, but nevertheless I felt hopefully that I'd at least get something done. Basically I went with expectations of nothing but hopeful of something. In the event my rotator cuff injury has certainly impaired performance, but I still managed to get a lot done. The final day in the forest was spent at Beauvais Est, for a couple of reasons. There are a lot of good easy ciscuits there, a blue and orange, but also a red circuit where I was able to push the boat out a bit. By this time I was feeling fairly ok in the shoulder and felt good. As it was the last day I didn't mind exacerbating existing injuries a little bit. Firstly we started on the blue circuit ticking La Chaufferette, Le pt'it coin, Le Boeuf sous le toit, Agoraphobie, Les Gros Bras, La Bidouille amongst others until starting on the red circuit - I was determined to clock up at l

Today we woke to rain. The rain seemed to be from low lying clouds and was that sort of drizzly stuff that doesn't seem to clear quickly. Bugger. This did however seem to be shifting after a couple of hours and the day seemed to be clearing up nicely. Andy and Rach had decided to head into Font itself to check out the local attractions whilst we decided to kick around the gite to wait for the weather to do something or other. The clouds started to clear about lunchtime so we agreed to meet Andy and Rach at Apremont as it's supposed to be a quick drying venue. Info from GCW was that it was covered and might not be as good as Sabots which was where they were headed but as we were meeting people there already I decided to head over with a view to moving if it was rubbish. It was actually pretty good. We decided to head over to the Bizons area for no other reason than it was fairly close and there were amenable climbs for everyone. We started on the orange circuit, particularly on

Today was the mid-week rest day and to be honest I was pretty wrecked from the past two days so me and the wife decided to catch the train into Paris with a view to seeing the catacombs, one of the Parisian tourist attractions I hadn't actually seen yet. As if it was planned, the weather was actually cack, which was convenient - although later on it did clear up. We got to Paris about midday and went via the metro to the catacombs and after some lunch we joined the end of the lengthy queue. It went down pretty quickly though and after about 45 minutes we were at the door. It was all a bit sombre being surrounded by several hundred thousand if not million skulls and bones but really interesting too. Afterwards we walked along the Seine and sat down by the river watching the bateaux touristiques going by near the Ile de Cite. It was really nice to visit Paris again as it's been a while since we've been. We had to be back fairly early to pick up the car from the garage. The fi

The day started off by taking the car to the garage. In typical gallic style, the garagiste took a look at me and assumed I wouldn't be able to communicate. he seemed happy when I could and I played on the fact that the owner of the gite had recommended his garage in a preventative attempt not to get screwed. He took the car for a spin and came back saying he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I explained that the sound was intermittent and he said he'd take a look at it and let me know later in the day if he found anything dangerous. After heading back to the gite to pick up the girls we decided to head off to l'elephant having to shuttle run twice. Following a brief look at the black ciruit problems 1 and 2 I realised I needed to warm up. After several orange and blue problems I decided to have a look at La Traversée des Fissures Vertes (6a) which seemed to suit me more. After looking at the first few moves it seemed to be going well but for some reason I

Monday 5th April Taff hasn't been climbing much and Andy and Chris are relatively newish climbers so 91.1 seemed like the perfect venue to start with. I also needed to test out the damage I'd done to my shoulder so wanted to start really easy. I've been to 91.1 before and I love this place. the circuits are not too ballsy and the aspect is open so it tends to be nice and sunny. The girls got settled siting on a rock and after a celebratory chocolate eclair for the wife's birthday we started on the orange circuit. The shoulder was quite achey after a bit but I still managed to get quite a few of the problems done, the nicest of which was no.12 a slabby Font 4. The guide we were using for the circuits was teh purple guide although when looking for the problems later on in the circuit none of the diagrams seemed to correspond - whether there were two circuits I don't know, but it was quite confusing though. I had intended to try Flipper but I couldn't find it at al

Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th April On the Saturday we finally finished packing and made our way down south. The plan was to stop at my parents before departing for Font early on Sunday. The journey down was ok, although we arrived later than we'd planned. Instead of meeting up with Andy et al for a drink as we'd hoped, we had tea with the olds and a couple of glasses of wine. Early to bed for the journey down... Andy, Chris and Rach arrived at 7 in the morning and after relatively little faffing we headed to Dover. We were supposed to be travelling in convoy but promptly lost them on the way to the motorway... There was nothing to speak of on the roads as it was early on Easter Sunday so the journey was relatively easy. We were travelling down the M1 and were approaching the M25 when I needed to pass a maroon car that was hogging the centre lane. As I passed it it seemed to drift into the outside lane and came close to veering into us - I passed it as quickly as I could and a li

Due to the fact that the wifi at the Gite has not been working all week I've not been able to update the blog. Therefore I'll try to write a brief synopsis of what I've managed to get done, or rather not get done this week...

It's been a week since wrecking my right shoulder. Finally I have reached a point where I would be ready to start some light climbing if I was so inclined. And if it wasn't raining. From being ecruciatingly painful, through to a dull continuous ache with sharp pains I can now wake up without it hurting. Today, I also had no pain when leaning on my elbow in bed - it may sound like a small victory, but if I tried this even on Wednesday I would have had shooting pains from my forearm to my spine. We're off to Font on Sunday and I can't wait. We're stopping off in Wellingborough at my parents on Saturday night and driving down on Sunday morning. That should give me two more days of full rest before loading it on Monday. Climbing will be the real test. I'm certain that I've done damage to it, but how much remains to be seen. Nevertheless I've started to compile a secret list (presumptuous, but hey.) Some targets could be as follows, or indeed none at all... M

I popped another couple of DP (that sounds wrong...) last night so I could sleep. Again I didn't wake in the night and woke up without any immediate pain. I can still feel twinges, but it's much much better than it was. Another few days of complete rest to consolidate and as long as I take it easy in Font and ice it I reckon I'll be able to get more done than I thouight I would.