Starting Again

It seems like a long time since I've been out bouldering. In fact, I know how long it is. My bouldering mat was still in it's shrink-wrapping from my last trip to Font in September last year. So much has happened since then....


Having had a busy couple of months I found myself on Friday looking at the weather maps for the weekend and wondering whether my intended trip north to Achnasheen was really worth it or not. When the levels of predicted precipitation run not just to blue but through yellow and well into the red zones on the map, one does wonder whether putting a giant umbrella over the house wouldn't be a good idea. A 5pm phone call at work on Friday made the decision for me. I wasn't going.


Motivating myself to go climbing without company is always hard. With Diff away working for most of the weekend and other buddies, sick, injured or out of the country, I needed some pretty good weather to coax me out. It was my lucky day! Bored with driving I opted for Berry Hill and found that lots of people had had the same idea. It's a lovely spot, south facing with a good view of the hills. Asking permission to climb is (according to the guidebook) imperative, but a knock at the door received no response. As an aside, what is the protocol in this case? Is the default position to climb without permission and deal with it if a problem arises, or is one supposed to not climb because one has not obtained permission? Anyway, I opted for the former.


I was the only one bouldering among several parties of traddies. A very nice chap with lots of tattoos and gold teeth came over to chat and offered that I could climb with them if I wanted. I hope I didn't offend him by declining his offer. I was quite keen to just potter on some boulders and get moving again rather than worry about gear and ropes and being too high up!




There's nothing particularly difficult at Berryhill (although some things were a bit tricky!) but it was a good day for cruising through 16 problems, reminding my skin that it needs to grow and reminding myself how to climb. Some warm sunshine and a strong wind made for a pink face, but I went home very content.

Sheep Sh* Shoes

Determined to get out last Saturday, somehow, someway and with someone, Penny and I left Edinburgh at 13.00 hours and scooted south to Hepburn. Penny had never been before, so I felt like the relative expert (ha ha). In short, I knew where the boulders were, how to get there and that the grades can be a bit random.

Predictably, there was nobody else climbing there. The bracken had shot up since I was last at Hepburn in June. The midges were out, but bearable, and most importantly the rock was dry in spite of a week of monsoon conditions. Yet again I forgot to take my big brush for cleaning things that haven't been cleaned in a while, but since we ended up doing the rounds of several problems I've done before, I don't suppose it mattered very much.

My disappointment in writing this is that the problems at Hepburn don't seem to have any cool names. Or am I missing something? I thought half the fun of climbing and bouldering was that what you did had a name. I can't wait for the day when I can say "yeah, I did Monty Pythons last week" (well, I can dream....!) but saying "yeah I did that roof problem on the roof boulder at Hepburn on Saturday" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. OK, so the right hand roof problem on the roof boulder isn't 7a+, but even so, you get my drift.

Penny on the "warm up" (!) 6b slab

Anyway, I was pretty chuffed with the RH roof problem at 6b. Quite a contrast to the slabby 6b on the warm up wall that I have tried and failed on every previous visit. For some reason, today was the day. A few precarious wobbles up the slab, furiously gripping the slightly sweaty crimpy sidepull, and the next thing I knew my heavy posterior felt quite comfortably balanced over my left foot, while I managed to squeeze one and a half fingertips into the mono above my head. A short step through with my right and a very quick pop, and the top was in my hands! What a surprise!! It was probably a good thing that nobod but Penny and the sheep were there to hear my squeals of delight. I should probably have been locked up for breach of the peace.

The final pop on the 6b slab

So, further surprise to do the roof problem too. The two problems could not be more different. Penny worked out how to start the problem and found the magic little foothold tucked way under the edge of the roof. The problem for us was that slapping for the nose meant that both feet were coming off. One is then left hanging with the prospect of campusing the next 2 moves at least. Some girls are good at campusing. I'm not one of them. So then we found a heel hook. It wasn't very good, and looked pretty worn, so we tried to be careful not to scrape any more off it. It worked though, so we were able to keep at least one foot on while effectively at full stretch horizontally. Another big slap to bring the right hand in and the left hand to join it, left only the reach back to a good lip, a crazy high foot and a hefty rock over to top out. Magic. It took a bit of piecing together, but it was worth the effort for the satisfaction. I hadn't even bothered to try this one previously, thinking it was far too hard. Mind over matter has never seemed quite so pertinent.

Psyching up to slap for the nose... RH roof problem

Having lost a lot of skin from all that slapping, we cruised home. I got to work on Monday and realised that the funny smell was coming from the Hepburn sheep poo on my shoes. So these weren't my work shoes after all....

Time to change

I had no idea that changing the clocks could change the weather in quite the way it did this year. It was as though somene flicked a switch, quite literally.

Having decided that it was asking a bit much of myself to fit in two days climbing and all the other things I needed to do, we took a decision to climb one day and do other stuff the other day. Dithering, as usual, I opted for Saturday at home and Sunday out on the rock......until Guy phoned. Our lazy morning in bed was interrupted by the dingly ding of text messages and phone calls. Guy said he was going to Kyloe, so I said, could I go too, Guy said yes, then Diff said he might come too. Suddenly we had a little party going!

We scooshed down the A1 and got a bit of a shock getting out of the car. How cold?? Bracing? More than..... it was baltic. Hard to believe that it was nearly April and we had travelled south. What a day to choose trad.....

Climbing in duvets. I was very glad of my down sweater.

I am ashamed to say that the last time I attempted any trad was a couple of weeks ago at Bowden I fell off. First lead fall, and I'm so ashamed of it, I'm refusing to divulge the grade. This time, I think the only reason I didn't bail this time was Guy and Diff egging me on. First up was Tacitation, a classic of the crag. Diff talked me through the gear placements just by looking at the route from below (I have very little trad experience, unlike him). Despite being pretty gymnastic, the first move wasn't that hard. A little tricky for someone my height, maybe, but nothing to complain about. Guy put on some fantastic faces when he came up second. Chin out and, trying hard, he complained loudly - lots of hot air as far as I could see. He had no trouble at all.

Guy hopping up the first move of Tacitation VS 4c

We did have trouble staying warm, so next up was some soloing of Severes. We couldn't (or wouldn't or just didn't) make sense of the guidebook other than to establish we were on on of Eeny, Meeny, Miny or Mo. It was nice to trot up something very easy. It's very satisfying, and probably pretty good for your head. I opted to go up with the rope so I at least had a backup plan if I freaked. I didn't freak and, after chucking a couple of cams in, even went adventuring up an overhanging crack. I had no idea what grade it was, and no idea what I was letting myself in for, but went for it anyway. There was good gear and the holds were all decent. Even more satisfying! I think it was the top half of Christmas Tree Arete Direct. Who knows. Who cares. It was fun.


Finally deciding it was too cold for much more, Diff hopped up Gagarin's Groove. Guy picked out an MVS somewhere close to the holly tree, which looked pretty straightforward from the ground, but was green and slimy and off balance when we got on it. Nasty.

Eventually we gave it up for being too cold when it started to snow, and headed home via the Bluebell Hotel in Belford.

That night, the clocks changed...... and so did the weather.

Amidst car troubles, and a lot of rearranging, six of us paid a visit to the Dovehole boulders on the Sunday. It could not have been more different from Saturday. Balmy sunshine and a warm spring breeze made it warm enough to climb in t-shirts. It was blissful.

Dan, Sarah and I had a good crack at an undercut problem on the Monkey Face boulder. Dan and Sarah made short shrift of it, but it took me a little more effort than that. I put it down to my advanced years, although that's possibly the lamest excuse I could have ever come up with.


Dan then came rushing over saying he'd found a really good problem for us. Unfortunately, it was a little bit heightest, but with some growing, I managed it.


Roz, who has a significant height advanage on me, had a bit of an issue with this problem. Her chin had a close encounter of the scraping kind whilst getting to grips with the top out.......


So much so that she needed a lie-down afterwards.

Collectively I think we wore through a lot of skin, but we had a great day. Spring finally seemed to have arrived, a real turning point in the year. I can look forward to not worrying about being freezing cold the moment I spend more than an hour outside.

Team Sunshine at Dovehole

Mad March

It's hard to know where March has gone. The weather seems to have been all over the place, as have we, and there has been little time to sit still and take stock.

I've had another few trips around the country for various things (avoiding those dreadful train journeys, thank goodness), and have therefore encountered another hiatus in the training schedule (what training schedule?!).

My weekend started on Thursday. Hurrah! A good thing, surely. Well, not necessarily. It started with an impromptu post-work drink (or four), which blurred Friday quite considerably. Having scraped through the day, I managed a few routes at Alien 1 and finished (just about) in time to jet off to Tom's party. Everyone who's anyone in the world of normal strong climbers was there. This was the place to be and the place to be seen. Having escaped the party with only fizzy pop damage, I crashed into bed and had a night of weird and restless dreams. Serves me right for having pasta and goats cheese as my post-midnight dinner.


On little sleep, and an early start to make cake, we headed to Raven Crag, scooting past all the crowds at Bowden, slipping just over the hill to peace and tranquility and a better view of the Cheviots. Granted the climbing isn't quite world-class, being a bit on the sandy side, but it faces the sun, dries quickly in the breeze and best of all, nobody else seems to go there! Given our approach to Saturday, this was ideal.

The (pretend) hard core boulderer in me acknowledged that those elusive good conditions were definitely not going to appear today. Temperatures went beyond warm and well into the sweaty zone. Nice. The more realistic part of me realised I was just up for some time outside, soaking up some sunshine after what seems an interminably long winter. We did, of course, agree (tongues firmly in cheeks) that since we were only going to be messing about it would be bad form to do so on quality problems found elsewhere in the County. No sense in wearing out problems we hadn't a hope in hell of ticking today. Northumberland sandstone is soft, after all....ask Sam.

Caroline pulled the biggest flapper I've ever seen off her little finger on the very first move of the very first problem. She's too strong for her own good!! It was nasty. Blood welling up under the torn skin. Lots of chat about superglue ended with an elastoplast and several rounds of tape - a professional job.

Caroline's flapper - bad pic, but now she has her own blog I can't nick her good pictures any more ;-)

We started on the Meadow Wall, working along the problems right to left. Stuart was enjoing his first day out on real rock and with his long reach he managed a number of moves we birdies struggled with. Like this one, which was a definite dyno-for-small-pocket-off-non-existent-smears for us:

The move above the dyno....

It took a while for us to remember how to do each of the problems, but since we had taken the pressure off, it was fun rather than frustrating. We went back to the scary slab too - I was impressed that I managed to do it first time in spite of very sweaty hands. I even managed to chalk up half way. Didn't manage that before!

This picture looks pretty vertical; the only down side is that because you can't see my right hand, I could be holding a massive jug. You'll have to take my word for it that there are no crimps on this problem, let alone jugs! All just little tentative smears for both hands and feet.

Scary biscuits! And a welcome bigger hold at the top....not that much bigger though!

The sunshine was wonderful, but just as we reluctantly decided it was time to head back to the city for our evening engagements, the clouds gathered and it started to rain. We didn't feel so bad about leaving after all. When you have to, it's nice to be given another excuse to leave.

Kyloe-in-the-Rain

We made another less than ideal call on the weather last weekend, having other stuff to do on Saturday and opting to climb on Sunday. Ah well, such is life. As we drove down the A1 towards Northumberland the sun was shining and we could see miles out to sea. Caroline commented that she'd always wondered what that coastal view looked like! But as we turned off the A1 it started to rain, and we realised that above the road we were driving along was a line - cloud on the left, sunshine on the right. We were turning left.

Sam had sent Sarah a text message saying that it was pouring at Kyloe so they'd headed to the shelter of Back Bowden. We ploughed on to Kyloe thinking , how bad can it be in the trees.

It stopped raining by the time we got there, but the ground was pretty soggy. Some problems had dribbles of water down them, and some holds were damp but a lot was climbable, and pretty ok actually! Cold and dry.....the elusive "great conditions"!! Wow....this could be exciting ;-)

Then is started raining again. But it was so good to be back on real rock. It felt like ages and ages since I was in Spain, and somehow warm Spanish limestone isn't quite as satisfying as cold, sticky County sandstone. Now why is that?? Am I just strange?


So, amidst lots of sitting about under Cubby's Lip, Sarah managed a proper pop at the sit start to Monty Python's. It was so dark that it took ages to get this photo of her. Eventually I took it about a full second before she moved, which just about gave my cold little camera time to think, charge and flash at the right moment!

For the first time I managed to complete that mammoth traverse from the easy way down leftwards. Caroline too managed it, which surprised her (but not me!) since she's not been climbing for a wee while.

Watching Sarah from the shelter of the Jocks sit start

While the rain was splashing away we thought it might be a good excuse to try the sit start to Jocks and Geordies. It's so hard (for us) that we wouldn't seriously give it a go without a sound reason to do so, probably preferring to concentrate on the standing start (first things first, walk before you run, and all...) But in the rain, it seemed sensible to lie on our backs, feet on the back wall, and just pull hard directly upwards, and from there work out which hand would hold longest if we let go with the other one.

I have to say, that these sorts of sit starts are not my forte. We came up with lots of options, none of which were successful, or even promising. Then someone showed us The Way. It helped, in that we then had something to aim for, but still wasn't enormously successful! I'm just not strong enough yet...

Early attempts in April 2007

When it stopped raining, we crawled out from under the rock and attempted the standing start. I had a go at this in April 2007 and was a long way from reaching the top left hand crimp. To my surprise, this time I managed to get both feet much higher, and wriggled my fingers over the edge of it. Pheewwwwweeeeeee! How exciting was that?! Having done that, I would have gone home quite happily then. To top that, next pop I managed to slap for the top sloper. Big slap. I couldn't hold it, partly because it was a bit.....what's the word? spoogee!, and partly because I didn't hit it quite right.

Looking back at the pictures from April 07 I realised that this time round, I was back-stepping with my left foot rather than twisting my knee in. Maybe that explains the height gain this time round. Ah, the wonders of technique!

So I went home with sore fingers and a smile on my face, psyched to come back and try again.

Hepburn in the County

Despite being a very Keen Bean, Sarah is good at civilised starts (unlike Caroline!). We eventually left Edinburgh around 11am the Saturday before last and tootled down the A1, three of us and three mats in a Metro. The car alone reminded me of school days and putting £2.50 worth of petrol in the car because that's all you could afford! Fantastic!

Hepburn, for those who haven't been, is right on the top of a hill. There is plenty of Forestry Commission parking, and a well worn path up to the boulders. They're pretty high (and therefore pretty scary) with some very not-so-great landings, but the quality of the rock is very good. It needs some more traffic though; many of the problems were a bit dirty. We had copies of both the new and the old Northumberland Bouldering Guides and having the new one made all the difference. The old guide was laughable in comparison, but I guess these things serve a purpose at the time.

Having only just started to recover from some lurgey I picked up on the bus I had low expectations of the day, hoping that just some fresh air and natural light would make me feel better. It did, but then I managed a couple of problems too which was a big bonus! The grading seemed pretty stiff to me, and Rob and Sarah agreed. Having said that, Rob had forgotten one of his shoes, and still, in one shoe, managed to make very light work of things I found very hard!

Rob in one shoe....

Rather than picking particular problems, I took to following Sarah around, on the basis that I couldn't be bothered to read the guidebook, and Sarah is usually pretty good at picking interesting things to try. I can also be fairly certain that whatever she chooses will keep me busy for a while, even if it takes her 5 seconds!

This problem was graded 6a, but it was pretty tough at that; Rob did it in one shoe! I don't know whether it just took me a while to warm up, but for ages I couldn't even do the first move. Probably bored with my flailing around, Rob and Sarah went back to a highball 7a on the Orthopaedic Boulder, and left me to my own devices. After a bit more flailing I managed to get off the ground, reach across with my right hand to hang awkwardly on the sloper while I worked my feet up enough to reach the little ear-like scoop with my right and swing for the jug with my left. After that it's all over (almost!) but the jug looks a very long way away from where I was hanging off a sloper and a crimpy sidepull!

Another 6a arete with a mean start...

We took a wander along the edge of the wood to the Roof boulder, which was pretty impressive. Even Sarah didn't have a pop at it! We also found some other very gnarly looking problems on the two boulders next to this one; some very crimpy starts with nothing-ness sidepulls higher up; some very blank looking vertical walls; some postage stamp landings - small and with crinkly edges. I couldn't get off the ground on the harder ones (6b, 6c maybe?) so I spent a while trying a 6a arete. You know how you can have days where things just don't make sense until someone spoon feeds you the answer? Well, I was having one of those days. I could not, for love nor money, work out how to get off the ground on this one, until Sarah showed me. The solution was some weird inverted upside down twisted hand positions, manageable for just long enough to slap for the jug.......in Sarah's long-limbed, Inspector-Gadget-arms world. I had to bounce my left hand via a non-pocket to be able to reach the jug. Welcome to my short-limbed, Little Miss Short Arms world!

Sarah on a stretchy highball 7a - if she couldn't reach, there wasn't much point in me trying!

We then followed Sarah's nose through dense pine woodland (think Wild Wood and sharp sticks - interesting with a bouldering mat strapped to your back) for what seemed like hours until we found a very Font-esque boulder with a mossy 7a slab on it. Sarah was the only one with enough energy and enough shoes(!) to have a shot. She made good progress, but it needed a bit of a clean and probably needed to be cooler and drier for her to succeed.

We were being eaten not just by midges but by bigger things which looked suspiciously like mosquitos, so we tootled home. I didn't think they had managed to creep this far north, but maybe they have. Nasty things. I have a bite which is still itchy 2 weeks later. As the weather cools a little and the bugs go back into hibernation, Hepburn is definitely somewhere to go back to.....with a stiff brush and lots of mats and lots more spotters!

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.

Another nice day out

Last weekend we had another fabulous day in the County. A late start (because I'm lazy and Caroline had been partying!) led us to Raven Crag. The parking for Bowden Doors looked a bit like Picadilly Circus, so we felt very smug when we realised we had the whole of Raven Crag to ourselves. Sure, it doesn't have any hard core, Font 8b, pulley-ripping, tendon-twanging problems (nothing worthy of note on the Scottish Climbs blog aggregator anyway), but we just wanted to be outside, climbing on real rock and enjoying the fresh air and winter sunshine.

One thing we couldn't get over was how cold it was! If the wind stopped, it was bearable. As soon as even the gentlest breeze started, we were frozen. The first problem we looked at was the Raven Traverse. It's not that hard, and Diff and I made fairly short work of it last August. But on this February afternoon we found ourselves unwilling to grip the rock properly for fear that it would hurt our frozen fingers! Are we being especially wussy about this? Cold hands + sharp rock = EXTREME PAIN!

We could not get our fingers warm. Rather than risk injury, we didn't pull too hard on the traverse. Instead we wandered further along to a problem I hadn't remembered seeing last time. Mind you, in August, Raven Crag is hidden under 6 feet of bracken, so I think I can be forgiven for not seeing everything that was on offer!

This problem baffled us for ages. Feet were there, the mono was there (yes, even for our pixie fingers it was pretty much a mono!), and we could just about reach the sloper ledge. But after that, there seemed to be an endless reach northwest for the top edge, with absolutely nothing as an intermediate. Just nothing. As far as we could see, you needed to be a) extremely gangly (Sarah?!), b) very tall, c) positive on the ape index by at least 4 inches or d) Inspector Gadget.

Here is Caroline with her hand on the sloper. The problem was where to go next?! Caroline wore most of her skin off by repeating the one move from the mono to the sloper.

As usual it was footwork that triumphed. Having identified which foot to balance on in order to reach through to an undercut with my left hand, I managed to match on it, then go up for the top edge with my left hand and top out. No doubt I was "off route" by using the undercut and any competent boulderer wouldn't count this as a send. But do I look like I care? Not this time.

I never cease to find reward in the process of repeatedly failing on one move, and then suddenly, for no apparent reason, finding it easy. How does that happen? What changes? Why do I find it almost impossible to identify what is different between failed attempts and successful attempts? The wonder of climbing....this is why I continue to torment myself with repeated failure. Maybe David Henry Thoreau was right: Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Pulling on the mono long enough to go up for the slopeynothingness ledge

How did you get up there??

Caroline decided to save the mono problem for another day, so we wandered further along to Meadow Wall, and tootled about on some of the problems there, inventing challenging traverses until the sun was nearly gone and the chill settled in for the night. The wall is reasonably high (we think , anyway) for bouldering, and we laughed til it hurt remembering how Caroline had bottled it on a problem at Bas Cuvier, choosing to jump the 15 feet to the ground rather than top out; her hands were on the top, her body was over the edge, she just needed to get her leg over ;-) !!

So instead of pulling on monos with no skin left on her fingers, Caroline onsighted this scary slab problem. No disco leg, no bottling it, no second attempt necessary. Brilliant. Clearly it was scary enough to warrant a little self-hug of reassurance at the top :-)

We cruised home in a beautiful sunset, pleased that we managed some time outside and looking forward to flexing our egos, promoting ourselves and becoming famous in the Scottish climbing scene by bragging about our world-class climbing achievements on our blogs.

Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed.

Dovehole Boulders

Saturday was set to be good weather-wise, and for once the forecast was right! It was warm (for February!) and the sun looked promising so Caroline, Andrea and I headed for Northumberland. We all agreed that so often we find climbing in winter so difficult because all three of us get so cold so quickly. Whether this is an unfortunate consequence of our lean, ripped physiques and low body fat, or just because we are girlie wusses, I'll leave you to decide, but Saturday was set to be a perfect temperature for us. Having been to Kyloe so often, Andrea suggested Dovehole.

For some unknown reason I appeared to have removed the road atlas from the car (strange, since we came to rely so heavily on such precious items while we were on the Continent) so we struggled a little with the directions in the Northumberland Bouldering Guide. For those of you who know this wonderful tome, I'm sure you will appreciate the cartographic challenges faced by its valiant authors. More by luck than our expert map reading skills, and maybe because the road atlas was sending us good vibes from it's hiding place under the front seat, we happened upon the Dovehole Boulders peeking out from behind the trees a little way up the hillside. It was a lovely spot, sheltered from most of the wind, and with a lovely view of the Cheviots.

Our first task was to eat. So we sat on the mats and munched our way through various chocoate biscuits, cookies, sardines, coffee, juice and breadsticks, before finding a slightly damp traverse to fall off.

First things first: food!

We started on boulder number one and discovered an interesting and particularly challenging B2 traverse. This was the first time Caroline and I had been bouldering outdoors since September, so it took us a while to work things out.




Following the problems round the boulder in an anti-clockwise direction, the next one was very different from the fingery traverse. A big slappy reach for a rounded lump, followed by a heel hook, turning to a high rockover, and a looooong reach back for some nothingness, left two of us very chuffed to flash it, and one frustrated that she could only do it when nobody was looking!

Caroline getting the heel hook

Depending on which way the boulder was facing, we discovered that some problems were too damp to try. There were some very worn patches too, and we tentatively attempted some of these, our efforts tinged with a mite of guilt at the additional erosion we would undoubtedly be causing just by putting feet on rock.

Our last problem didn't take as long as we thought it would, and our perseverance was rewarded with a proper top out on a Font-height boulder. Wicked! Unfortunately, in our excitement we forgot to take any pictures of it!

We didn't race around and do a huge number of problems; we didn't even do anything especially hard. But just being outside again was fantastic. Circumstances are such that it isn't always possible to spend every day of every weekend outdoors and climbing (although there are many people who seem to achieve that!). For me, the start of the year has been busy, and I have had things other than climbing occupying my time and energy.

Frustrating as this is, I'm not climbing well at the moment anyway so some time out is probably of great benefit. I read with interest extracts from Chris Sharma's journal, written for Climbing magazine. If great climbers like Sharma sometimes feel as though they don't care if they never climb again, maybe it's ok for me to take a wee break from training and pushing my limits while I do other things. Maybe "me and my climbing" have reached the mature stage of our relationship! Climbing indoors is not inspiring me at the moment; I'm finding it hard to muster the enthusiasm to pull hard. Climbing outdoors is currently restricted by office hours and weather, which frequently conspire to limit my opportunities. This weekend's jaunt to the County has most definitely improved my psyche. I hope it will keep me going a bit longer and allow to me focus on other things without going slowly mad.