Checking In

Well the second week of the Easter holidays has flown by. It’s Sunday and I should be working hard planning lessons but instead I’m writing this. (It’s hard when the sun is shining and the dog wants to play catch, to focus on quality lesson plans)

The last week of Easter has been good climbing wise. No hard sends but some nice trips out. Easter weekend saw me hook up with the Glasgow crew at Earl in Yorkshire and then up to Callerhues in Northumbria. As always the banter was good and loads of fun was had as well as much skin lost sending 6bs and trying harder stuff in hot conditions. It was good to see Sully was psyched again and was up for getting strong and taking bouldering seriously.( He has newly purchased a pair of moon sending slacks). As always Pete ‘ highball’ Phillips was bouncing off the blocs psyched out of his mind to be in Yorkshire and tickling grit. With this enthusiasm, the presence of strong chris and Johnny and excessive amounts of psyche we tried lots of medium grade problems (6c-7b) and it became a bit of a joke over the weekend as why none of us managed to get up anything hard.

As well as this trip I made a couple of visits up to the beautiful limestone outcrop of Warton pinnacle. This venue is in it’s fairytale perfect state at the moment as the spring sunshine bounces off the weather worn limestone buttresses, surrounded by freshly budding trees and a floor of lush colourful flowers .

The first trip was on a nice windy day to try some harder lines. I spent another session falling off Debaser ss (7b) and voodoo people (7a+). After giving these problems far to much attention and nearly breaking my shin skidding off the calf busting rock over of Voodoo people, I headed to black buttress for hopefully some light relief.
Not to be so as I got sucked in my the beautiful flow stone on Black Light (7a+). I started to work this, managing to work out the moves to catch the tricky dead point to a poor pocket/sloper. Then you have to set up for a very cool flick through move to a distant edge. Although I didn’t manage to hole this move when I do it’s going to feel cool but unfortunately it’s another problem for the to do list.

Me trying Debaser (Font 7b)

The following visit I headed up for an easy day ticking 6’s. Most enjoyable and pleasant fun. On this visit I took a look at the stile boulder and climbed the really cool slightly overhanging wall problem at 6c. This is a nice hidden gem which I hadn’t tried before but was well worth seeking out. The moves brought a satisfied smile to my face before this turned to panic and horror as I tried to top out direct through the Ivy. What fun bouldering is!

Any way that was the antics of last week. Oh except for reading Jerry Moffatt’s book revelations. This has got be incredibly psyched for trying hard this spring/summer season. Bring iton!