On Wednesday I met up with Dave and Robyn at Mother Carey's Kitchen car park. After a morning's top rope practise on King of the Disco, the weather closed in and we made retreat to Alun's house for warm cups of tea. The following day was forecast to rain all day, so plans turned to a fun day at Oakwood Theme Park. The day following was delightful, and progress was made on KOTD and another route to it's left. Alun even came out to put up a new route to the right of Disco Leg. Nice one guys!
Seven new routes on a newly developed Pembrokeshire sea cliff?
Dave was down to stay for a couple of days and I hadn't really thought about where to go. The last few times that Dave has visited, we'd mainly been poking our noses around areas that seemed underdeveloped in the guide books. We had come away each time with some cool new routes and had a good laugh. We headed to Mother Carey's, with an idea to check out an area between that and Blind Bay. We found a lovely set of little walls, with good lines and on top quality limestone. Check it out if you're in the area!
On Wednesday evening, me and Edmund jumped in the van and drove down to South Devon to meet up with film maker Jerry for a couple of full days capturing ascents of Moonraker at Berry Head and Aviation at Lowman on the Dartmoor National Park. After packing in two big days, we returned home to Pembroke feeling happy but tired...
Last week I was out with Ben for two days of sea cliff climbing. He has recently submitted an application to do his Mountaineering Instructor Award Training course in Snowdonia and wanted to get more sea cliff climbs in his logbook prior to his training. We had a good day at Mowingword ticking classics on a classic crag. Day two was spent at another classic crag - Mother Carey's Kitchen, where more great routes were climbed. Good luck Ben with your training, I'm sure you'll love it.
On Friday I was working for NICAS doing a moderation of an outdoor climbing tower in South Wales delivering the scheme. The weather was amazing and the GCSE students enjoyed their session.
Yesterday I was out with local friend Alun for a couple of ace adventure routes on the lesser visited Western Face of Mother Carey's. We climbed the first pitch of Oz, into the second pitch of Sporting Chance, which provided an excellent journey with a good dose of adventure. We followed by climbing another good route Oil Me Up. Two top routes that both didn't get a star between them...
Over the last few days I've been in the Peaks with Ed and Jerry to continue Jerry's filming project. We were pretty lucky with the weather and we got two classics covered - Sirplum, "One of the great ticks in the Peak which reaches positions that other E1's don't". I had done this two pitch route with friend Dean Russle back in 2011 and it was fun getting back on it and revisiting "the very edge of the world"... We also climbed a route called The Stalk, given VS, but decided not to film it as, despite it's stars, wasn't a great route. The following day we strolled into the beautifully lush Chee Dale Gorge, with our attention fixed on the grand five pitch Chee Tor Girdle, an epic VS, given 4b, 4b, 4a, 5a, 4c. I had also done this route before, back in 2008 with Giles Cranston, in the pissing rain, but fortunately the first pitch was the only to succumb wet rock and we enjoyed the rest of the routes in the dry. This time we were blessed with perfect conditions and although the filming of different angles on the girdle took a long time, we managed to get it all covered in two days. Not a bad three days in the Peak.
