Paul and I had planned a trip to Scotland, but the weather forecast was very poor. Such a shame after the weeks of sunny weather we’ve been having recently. But, not to be deprived of our sport completely I headed down to the Peak to join Paul for some climbing on my least favoured rock; Grit! It seems to me that grit is either steep and strenuous or unprotected…
Favouring protection we chose strenuous (and a chance to dodge the frequent rain showers) at Cratcliffe. The ‘Hard Rock’ route Suicide Wall was our main objective. A great route, with a tough jamming section on the first pitch. Which I “enjoyed” falling off twice before finally getting sorted with most of my skin still intact!
After that we went just round the corner to Rheinstor for a different style of climbing – steep limestone.
Paul on the very under-graded steep limestone of Rheinstor
I normally like limestone. But this crag was steep and had no protection until 20 feet up! A miserable effort followed with failure. Luckily for me I had Paul with me equipped with his super strong steely fingers.
I’m not sure if the smile in the next picture shows how pleased he was with climbing the well under-graded Valhalla, or if it was for his new pink bike. 😉
Paul looking very pleased with his new pink bike – it even had tassels on the handle bars!
The new bike looks fantastic. Probably very light weight, but how many gears does it have? And the tyres look quite slick… is that for speed?
It was fantastic! Yeah, and you know how Paul loves to go fast – he’s a bit of a master at the head first crash! Can you remember this one – http://www.sterling-adventures.co.uk/blog/2006/11/26/kelda-goes-walkabout-and-paul-gives-blood/ ?