Happy New Year!

Not much climbing today, I think....

Happy New Year!

The Arch

Maybe I'll buy a season ticket to London.

After Tuesday's train journey to London I flew down on Friday instead. I flew because the train times weren't going to get me to where I needed to be in time, even if I started out at 05.50 again. British Airways worked a treat. It was an easy journey, with not a muppet in sight. My conscience did prick me, though, as I suffocated on the CO2 emissions. My return flight on Sunday, by easyJet made me think that catching the train was infinitely preferable (for my blood pressure, at least) until I remembered Tuesday's 17.00 service from King's Cross.......

Anyway, I didn't sit down to write about planes, trains and automobiles. I sat down to write about The Arch, London's newest (?) climbing centre at London Bridge.

Since it was apparently leaking water out of the sky all day and everywhere on Saturday I didn't feel so bad about climbing indoors. The Arch was easy to find, easy to get to and definitely to be recommended at weekends. I met Tamsyn there, who has regularly found it a friendly place to climb. She tells me it is rammed solid after work during the week, but pleasantly empty at weekends. On Saturday we were the only two there for a while. Fantastic!

On the positive side, the problems were good (if sometimes seeming a bit height dependent), the staff were very friendly and we had the place to ourselves. And they have a nice shower.

On the less positive side, all the bolt on holds were filthy, so filthy it was nigh on impossible to tell the difference between yellow and black. I kid not, it was bad. To counter this, though, I understand that the whole place is closing over Christmas and New Year for a complete clean, re-set and re-paint. I'm sure if I'm wrong on that, someone will correct me.

Given that my regular haunt is Alien 2, I still come back to comparing everything with it, and to date, I still think I have the best deal on it. The Arch is similar in size ( or maybe a wee bit bigger) than Alien 2, but it has fewer problems. There are vast expanses of shiny emulsioned hardboard with very few holds and no features! It's frustrating to think that there could be so many more things to go at - why do they leave so much space? Am I missing something? The Leeds Wall was like that too. I like Alien 2's featured walls, and the sticky surfaces. They make for more interesting problems, with a variety of solutions. So why don't other walls have these things?

Interestingly, The Arch uses V grades. I have very little experience of these, so it was quite fun to not know where to start, whether to throw myself at V6 or start at V0. Tamsyn was a good guide. She set me on all the things she couldn't do. Some were ok, some spat me off first shot, but it was enough to allow me to find my feet and I reckoned after a few problems that my limit was probably around V6. I don't really know how that relates to anything else, but next time I go to The Arch I'll know where to start!

All in all, definitely worth a visit, and highly preferable to roaming London's busy shopping streets in search of Christmas presents. One last comment, their campus board might be signed by the great and the good of the climbing world, but it isn't a patch on Alien 2's new one ;-)

That's gotta hurt...

Cruising around the blogosphere I came across the Crippled Climber's blog. Intrigued by the header I went to the very first post to establish why this guy had started his blog. Check out his first two or three posts here.

Without wishing to spoil the read for you, the basic premis seems to be that indoor bouldering is bad for your health. Don't look at the pictures if you are remotely squeamish. It makes any of my skin injuries look as pathetic as they really are. I haven't had a chance to read more recent posts properly, but it sounds as though he made a pretty good recovery. Phew!

Dave Redpath's flapper courtesy of the Anvil. A mere scratch.....(Pic. thanks to Hotaches)

The Leeds Wall

Finding your way around a strange city by bus is always a daunting experience, but on this occasion I found the bus driver unusually pleasant and helpful. It's amazing how many things bus stops don't tell you - like fares, route direction (on a map - place names are no use if you don't include all the intermediate stop names), whether the bus gives change or not (in Edinburgh they don't), whether you can buy a return ticket etc etc. I set out for the Leeds Wall not really knowing where I was going, but the 20ft sign on the building helped quite a bit.

Disappointing. It's the only word for it. The higher leading walls look fantastic. Hundreds of routes, steep and slabby, and all of a decent length. In complete contrast, I found the bouldering totally uninspiring. Most of it is steep, and if you're not into steep, or not strong enough for steep, you might as well just walk away. On the vertical sections I reckon 3 extra problems for each one there would easily have fitted into the space available. It sure wasn't easy to invent your own problems with so few holds on the wall. To compound this problem, the walls were just painted - with gloss paint it seemed - and smearing was just not an option.

The most disconcerting thing, though, was the chalked up, rubber-coated, dirty holds. It was sometimes impossible to tell what colour each was, and at most was a challenge to distinguish blue from purple from green. The problems looked as though they had been set in the Dark Ages and not moved since. They were slimy and greasy, no matter how much I scrubbed at them with my trusty little brush.

I got chatting to someone who looked like he might be "local", who told me that he tried hard not to train here; he had a board at home and would even go to Sheffield rather than come here. He also told me that the feet on most of the problems don't change; all the small green screw-ons are permanent fixtures, and any new problems just have to use those feet, no matter whether they are in the right or wrong place. It took me a while to identify the green ones....they all looked mucky black-grey, not green!

Having paid my £3 registration fee (for which I was given a nice new chalk ball - bonus!) and £7.50 for a session, I thought I would just rag my skin on stuff that was way too hard for me. I quit because my skin was sore, not because I'd managed to achieve anything. I made good use of the excellent shop there, though. - lots of ladies kit and a decent range of shoes. Having been told that Sharma's new Pontas shoes were only available from sizes 6-11 I was delighted to find them in my size there. They weren't right for me, but I wouldn't have known that without trying them on. Unfortunately, they didn't have the Heras, which I think are the replacements for my beloved Athenas.

I haven't been to the Climbing Works in Sheffield yet, but in the meantime, long live Alien Rock :-)

Thou Shalt Not Climb Today...

...or "130 miles to Alien Rock" might be a better title for this post.

In our great wisdom, based on past experience, we chose to disregard (by not reading) any published weather forecast this weekend. On so many occasions have we trekked o'er vale and hill for some climbing, only to be thwarted by the weather. How often have we said in great disgust, "but the weather forecast said..."? How many times has the forecast not come true?

Saturday, as we all know, was a beautiful day. Cloudless, warm, nay even hot! I had promised myself that on Saturday I would make a start on the stack of domestic chores that is rapidly accruing, with the promise of some climbing fun on Sunday. I deliberately chose not to read a forecast, thinking that if Saturday was this nice, Sunday couldn't be horrific. How wrong was I?


Having packed 7 boxes of books at home, and spent some more time moving furniture and tidying, I was restrained at Saturday nights' festivities. I had a good sleep, packed my sack quickly and was ready to go. Caroline picked me up and we headed south, determined to do some trad. somewhere in Northumberland. It looked a little grey, but we commented that yesterday's heat would have made the rock sweaty and slippy. Bad conditions, and all that. Any self respecting climber knows you can't climb when it's too hot, right?

Little Spots
Just past Torness some little spots appeared on the windscreen. There was quiet. Caroline looked at the road. I looked at Caroline. We agreed it would pass, and carried on.

The further south we got, the heavier the rain got. We couldn't see the sea, let alone the tops of the hills.

"This is ridiculous, we might as well turn back, now. Nothing down here is going to be dry." This by the time we got to Grantshouse. So we turned back. The rain got heavier. We thought of Andrea who had gone out west for some sport, of Iain at Kilnsey, of Sarah on her way to sunnier climes, of Diff and the boys at Dumbarton....all (probably) basking in sunshine. And where we we? On the A1 in the rain. Hmph. We also remembered Andrea saying that Sunday would be nice out west. She had read the forecast.

Long discussions ensued as to whether we should drive for another 90 mins to Dumbarton, 2 hours to Loch Lomond, 60 minutes to Limekilns (I don't like Limekilns, says Caroline) ....we resisted calculating how long it might take to reach Kilnsey or the south of France. We concluded that going to Alien Rock would probably result in a slating ("why aren't you outside??") and that we'd already spent enough money on fuel. The only sensible option left was a trip to Ratho. At least nobody there would recognise us and give us a hard time for being indoors at the weekend. All the routes and the bouldering would be new to us, and we could have a Sunday treat of some "window" shopping in Tiso's. Yesss.... (we are girls after all, and we do like shopping, even though we vehemently deny it at every possible opportunity. Note, Window shopping. We had spent all our money on petrol.).

No power
So we trekked to Ratho, round the bypass, in the rain, thinking that at least we would get some stamina training in, if not any decent trad. The car park was surprisingly empty. Our previous concerns that rain=mobbed wall evaporated (unlike the rain) and we cruised as close to the entrance as possible.....only to be stopped by a damp, forlorn and very apologetic member of Ratho staff, who told us that the building was closed. Thieves had been digging into the floor overnight in order to steal the power cables. Since there was no power in the building health and safety regulations dictated closure. You must be kidding.....

Once, twice...three times unlucky?
We laughed, oh how we laughed. We had to explain why to the nice Ratho lady, that we had driven (by this time) 120 miles to Northumberland and back, and had still done no climbing. Sheepishly, we retreated to Alien Rock, expecting it too to be mobbed (rain+Sunday+Ratho closed surely must=busy), but it wasn't. As it was we had a pretty solid afternoon's training. We did feel marginally stupid turning up with 50 litre rucksacks, a full rack and 3 ropes, but the hundreds of 7-year olds there probably thought that was normal for hardcore climbing chicks like us.

We were mildly consoled by J's comment that Alien Rock wasn't busy because most people didn't have our dedication to their sport; they'd gone out, got wet, sacked it off and gone home.

We, on the other hand, drove 130 miles to end up at Alien Rock.

Day Tripper

I've spent some time in Liverpool this week, which has been interesting if work-orientated. As is my wont in strange cities, I had a ticket to ride and went hunting for the local climbing wall. Awesome Walls in Liverpool was just that, if one could ever describe a climbing wall as awesome. There was certainly a lot of it; acres of wall covered in the usual coloured blobs and chips. One thing I am never concerned about when visiting unfamiliar walls is being faced with unfriendly or unwelcoming staff. Liverpool must be one of the most friendly and familiar cities I have visited. Everyone wants to say hello, chat, tell you about good things to do and see in their fabulous city, although nobody seems to know where anything is or how to get antwhere. Even the bus stops don't give any clue as to which buses stop there.

Anyway, I digress. Nev, the friendly face of Awesome Walls, showed me around and then landed his pal Charlie with me for some bouldering. I had a fantastic couple of hours trying really hard on steep problems, albeit with with some trepidation. It's amazing how you get used to the set up at your local wall. I am accustomed to the space (yes, I said space) and height at Alien Rock 2. Awesome Walls has some bouldering located in the crypt and in the galleries of a former church. This means that while the wall is steep, it isn't very high, and if you fly backwards off the top of it, you are liable to hit the wall immediately behind you. This makes for somewhat timid dynos (if I were to ever dyno anything, that is) and in fact a reluctance to climb too high up the wall in the first place. It's a very strange feeling that one is subconciously holding back.

I was also surprised to see that the landing areas for some of the vertical walls (which weren't insignificantly high) were not covered with thick matting. Having once fallen off an overhanging blobs problem at an Alien Rock fun comp, landing coccyx first on the thinner mats and paying a late night visit to A&E, maybe I am unusually nervous about landings. My concern on this occasion was, bizarrely, for my ankles. I have no idea where that fear came from.... Maybe from tottering around in high heels this week, which probably did more damage than any landing.

My other observation about Awesome Walls was that the walls were very shiny! No smearing here! No "features for feet" problems, no sneaking padding up walls because holds were too far away. This made some of the problems pretty reachy for someone of my (slightly) diminutive stature. Following a conversation with Charlie about the transition between climbing indoors and then outdoors, I realised that the "sticky" indoor walls and the additional features actually offer a huge benefit to those wishing (or preferring) to climb outside, providing a much better environment for learning the techniques one might most usefully employ on real rock. Smearing, tiny footholds, finding your balance in preparation for reaching the next hold....all these things seemed so much harder when the only options were to put feet exactly where the route setter intended them to go. I thought wistfully of Font, again, and sighed.....

Having worn off some skin and exhausted my biceps, I went in search of something outdoors. I couldn't come to Liverpool and not see (the outisde of, at least) the two magnificent cathedrals here. It struck me that both might offer buildering potential....

When we walked up to the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral it was dark and I didn't have my shoes with me, and I thought I might get arrested, never mind not being brave enough to try to scale such a massive monument without any kind of backup plan as a harness and a rope. If I fell....Help! I'd be here, there and everywhere. But it did strike me that both the great west doors and the detailed stonework above it, would provide some interesting climbing.

This is the stonework on the facade above the main door. Nice tufas I thought.

I couldn't work out what these massive doors were made of, but they had plenty of bouldering potential. I'm pretty sure they're sturdy enough not to come off their hinges if one were to undertake a delicate traverse.

Then I found several huge buttresses on the sides of the building. They're like giant ramps leading from the ground to the bottom of the tower, almost a stairway to heaven, perhaps. Huge labs, asking to be tackled. They looked like concrete or stone to start with, but tapping on them made a very hollow sound, as if made of hardboard. My guess is that they were at about 45 degrees so in theory eminently climbable by aficienados of the slab. I bet there are some bleausards who would treat it like a walk in the park.

We also took a wander to the Anglican cathedral at the opposite end of Hope Street. [How funny is that? Hope Street with a cathedral at either end....oh the irony!] This seemed to offer fewer buildering possibilities, but I am going to put a picture of it here simply because it is the most enormous building. It's vast. 9,600 square metres, in fact. Well, I suppose it is the second largest Anglican cathedral in Europe. Alarmingly, it also has 31 tonnes of bells hanging in the tower, 219 feet up. Ouch. The highest ringing peal of bells in the world, apparently. Wow. I wouldn't want to be hanging by my fingernails up there at 11am on a Sunday morning!

Is this not a massive building?

We took a ferry 'cross the Mersey; from here is is easier to understand how big the cathedral is. The bond warehouses on the quayside in the foreground are about 6 storeys high, and the hill on which the cathedral sits is not high at all.

Unfortunately, I've missed the Channel 4 programme tonight about the human spider....although naturally I'd much rather be in Font or the County than half way up a skyscraper.

January Blues

My long anxiety to escape from the routine of office life has returned with a vengeance. Yes, I am suffering from post climbing trip blues. It seems almost inevitable that a high is followed by a low; by definition, once you reach the top, the only way is down! But I hadn't imagined that returning from a long trip would be quite as deadening as it has bee. I don't feel inclined to do very much, least of all concentrate on matters which sometimes seem trivial and unimportant. Another interesting twist to the process of adjusting to being home is driving on the left-hand side of the road. It was relatively easy to adapt to driving on the right, but reverting to the left has been much harder. Even now, a month on, I find myself concentrating very hard to make sure I don't end up on the right-hand side of the road when I turn right! How strange.

I knew that coming home would be great. I would enjoy seeing friends again, having home comforts like hot showers, a comfortable bed and internet access(!); I even looked forward to some hard training indoors. But the joy has been relatively short-lived. This is not to say that the delight in seeing friends and family again is any less than I anticipated; it isn't, at all. But it has amazed me how quickly it feels as though I had never been away, how quickly things return to "normal". I've been back at work for only 2 weeks and already assumptions are being made that I know about x, y or z which happened while I was away. Clearly, my colleagues believe I have some special powers akin to omniscience, that I myself have yet to identify or harness! It's very flattering, but also a bit frustrating.

The word frustration brings me neatly to the subject of training indoors. I had been warned that long sport climbing trips have a tendancy to sap one's strength, particularly bouldering strength, but (in my usual cocky fashion) I firmly believed in my immunity from such symptoms. Wrong! My first trip back to Alien 2 was soul destroying. What do you mean that's a 3?? It feels like an 8!! Similarly, some of the lead routes at Alien 1 seem far tougher than I think they should be for the grade. As Mr Brown rightly pointed out to me the other day, I haven't been climbing steep stuff, which is why so many indoor routes feel so hard. It also highlights the disparity between indoor grades and outdoor grades. In my opinion, any comparison between the two is highly suspect.

On the positive side, the grade labels no longer seem to affect my inclination to attempt either routes or boulder problems, although there is a considerable "can I be bothered?" factor instead! I am sure that will change with time. Indoor walls seem very uninspiring by comparison with the great outcrops of limestone we had become accustomed to. I haven't been able to get outside climbing since I came home, partly because of the weather, partly because I now have my 9-5 job back again and partly because life is so complicated here! There are so many other things I have to do (and want to do), but there isn't time to do them all.

I am hoping this is just January Blues; I'm not sure whether I am treating or torturing myself by flicking through all 1700 photographs that we took.

I have, however, returned to something I love. We had a lovely walk to the top of Ben Vorlich. It was a beautiful day until we got to the summit, where we found ourselves in an icy, gusting wind and thick cloud! Despite being a little chilly, it was nice to be back in familiar surroundings....very different from sun-drenched, Spanish limestone.

The snowy summit of Ben Vorlich

The view towards Loch Earn

Flatlands

There has been no climbing of significance to report over the last week or so, since I was forced, much against my will, to take a trip to the Flatlands of Middle England. Milton Keynes.

Even worse, I had to travel via Luton.

Luton Station....like any other railway station in the south east

Yet another instance of Work interfering with Play. I shouldn't grumble, since I am about to have a whole 14 weeks away from Work, in order to Play. But it is frustrating, when there isn't even an indoor wall to visit.

Milton Keynes, of course, has an indoor snow slope. Heading eastwards, I think it must be the biggest hill between there and the Alps! It is certainly visible on the horizon almost all the way from Luton. I knew that there was supposed to be a climbing wall of some description under this artificial hill, but the details on UKC were scanty and the Ellis Brigham website didn't give any more useful information than a phone number (which wasn't much use to me, doing my research, as usual, at midnight the night before departure). I managed to orchestrate my travel so as to minimise the time work activities would take and maximise my chances of locating and using said climbing facility.

Xscape, Milton Keynes. A pretend hill...

Nothing had quite prepared me for the disappointment of what Milton Keynes had to offer in terms of climbing facilities. Inside a shop were two tall towers, with assorted holds bolted to them. In addition to this was a very low and short bouldering wall, maybe 12 feet high and around 30 feet long. It cost £10 for HALF AN HOUR . The towers themselves looked as polished as the F3+ routes at Sella and the self-belay devices indicated that this is a "have-a-go" facility. As soon as you let go of the wall, the self-belay device lowers you right to the ground, thereby offering no scope for "working" moves. Maybe there weren't any moves to work anyway.

I had a chat with the staff in the shop, who were very nice. The facility is really aimed at children with desperate parents on wet Saturday afternoons. To that end, it is a fun and entertaining place to introduce pint-sized people to the joys of this wonderful sport, in the hope that it will inspire them to pursue it further. But I left thoroughly disappointed. It seems clear to me that Milton Keynes (and its environs) is a prime location for an indoor climbing facility. Everything else about this town is artificial; an indoor climbing wall would fit in beautifully.

This brings me to my rant about Milton Keynes itself. I might be biased against this fair corner of England on the basis that it offers me no opportunities to indulge my obsession, but that aside, I think I have never come across anywhere so soul-less and unimaginative. The theories of post-war town planning make sense; they're logical, there isn't any obvious or scientific reason why completely new, planned urban environments should not be successful. And yet, to travel around and through Milton Keynes is an almost terrifying experience. While it is green and leafy, the traffic flows smoothly round umpteen roundabouts, houses glimpsed through the trees look well-kept and tidy, it feels sterile and clinical. Where are the people? Why are there not more cyclists? Is there some kind of curfew in place, or a local bylaw that keeps everyone locked up at home if they aren't en route from one place to another (by car)? I see no evidence of Life (or should I say Lifestyle?). The last time I was in Milton Keynes was the day before the 2005 General Election. I kid you not, there wasn't a single election poster anywhere. No fliers, no posters, no campaign leaflets. Nothing. Maybe I have this wrong, but I can't imagine that even in so-called safe seats, MPs do nothing for their election campaigns. The lack of 'history' couldn't be more obvious if the place was called Newville. It's not just weird. It's wrong.

While I'm on a rant....Milton Keynes is flat. As a pancake. Perfect lazy (or fast) cycling country. But the whole place is littered with signs saying "No Cycling"!! The Green Party have clearly shot right past Milton Keynes on the M1......

The view of Willen Lake from my hotel. Maybe Milton Keynes is a haven of peace and tranquillity....

Trad Anxiety

The good weather seems to have been and gone; it's frustrating that the long days should be rendered useless by rain. I'm looking at it sheeting down now and hoping that it rains itself out by tomorrow. Having done so much bouldering and sport climbing so far this year, I thought it was about time I put my helmet on and got back to some trad. In my usual fashion, I will start with the easy stuff so as not to scare myself silly. Tomorrow may end up feeling like a huge anticlimax if all I can manage is a VS, but I am sure that longer term it will pay off not to jump straight on E2!

Yes, I am a huge scaredy cat when it comes to trad. At the moment, I'm atributing this to lack of practice. Tomorrow may change that view. I'm quite anxious about how Trad will feel, whether I will have lost my bottle completely. I hope that all the indoor training will pay off and my strength and technique will not fail me in my hour of need. It's my head that will get in the way (yes, even my little pinhead!).

Spanish bolts

Why is it that the psychologies of trad and sport are so different? I am happy to fall on bolts (well, relatively speaking), which someone else has fixed to the rock. I don't know when the bolts were fixed, by whom or how. But if I can at all help it, I won't fall on gear I placed myself 5 minutes ago. I will also try hard moves above bolts that I wouldn't in a million years contemplate doing on trad routes. I don't seem to be able to trust my own ability to save my own life, but I have blind faith in Joe Bolter's ability to wield a bolt gun and mix resin properly. [Apologies to those of you who might have bolted routes yourself - this isn't a criticism of your ability to place bolts, just an observation that I don't usually know who you are! In fact, it may be a credit to your skills that I am prepared to trust my life to your work.] In theory, if my gear placements are solid, they are as likely to hold my fall as bolts. But something deep down in my subconscious doesn't believe this.... I'm hoping (again) that practice and experience will help initiate some mind control so that I can match my trad grade to my sport grade. Maybe this is too much to ask of myself, along with my other goal of 7c by Christmas. Do I want the moon on a stick or what....??

High steps above bolts, not so easy above trad gear

Sunday Update
What is with this weather?? It's damp and horrible and it's rained all night so everything is soggy. So I decide to climb indoors. Two stamina sessions and 29 routes later, I step outside into beautiful sunshine! I am suspicious that the weather has a personal vendetta against me and my purposes for trad. Either that or this is an omen from the Gods, telling me that trad is not for me.