Sea Cliff Climbing in South West Wales and Mountain Cragging in Llanberis Pass.
Last week I went with Paul Donnithorne to check out some of the esoteric sea cliffs of the Cardigan Coast. Fair to say that although there are some striking lines to go at, the shale rock has an inherently unstable nature. After a bit of abseil cleaning we walked away with two new HardVS's and a cheeky two pitch E2 I called Strong and Stable. All good fun if you like that sort of thing...
On Tuesday and on the way up to North Wales I stopped back there to explore some other areas for future attention. On Wednesday I was out with Pat Littlejohn who was keen to check out some neglected parts of Llanberis Pass. The sun was out, warm, T.shirt weather. I climbed the first two pitches of Bable together, clipped into the belay and started taking in the ropes, what a lovely day. Out of the corner of my eye my attention was drawn to a white thing quickly role off a steep grass slope and free fall down a 30+m cliff. It was a sheep, a sheep had just fallen off the cliff! Before I could think to shout down to Pat an almighty crash of boulders and scree came up from below. "Pat!" I called down. Nothing. Fuck, that sheep has just landed on Pat Littlejohn! Luckily the ropes started to move again and eventually Pat reached the belay. Apparently he had just put his rock shoes on, stood up, moved 3m to the start of the climb just as the fully grown sheep had dive bombed into the rock that Pat had been sitting. It would have killed him if he had hung around for a further 10 seconds. Imagine the obituary...
Great day out in the Pass though, Despite the potentially lethal clumsy sheep. It won't do that again...
