Well the package Nat and I were waiting on came early a couple of Mondays ago now, we made the (rushed) decision to leave that day and so I spent the morning rushing around like a blue arsed fly changing money, paying in cheques for the car (Full amount, no hassle!), buying spare bulbs and all the paraphenalie required to drive the car on the other side of the road (although i'm not sure why, the french don't even seem to maintain their cars, it looks like there are thousands of scooters driving around paris at night but oh no, its the french in their little twingo's...), we made a brief stop at Nat's parents place for dinner, we went out to a posh chinese where her dad spent the vast majority of the evening trying to persuade me to drive his techno barge 7-series, I refused (knowing full well that my bank balance wasn't enough to repair even the slightest damage to the car). After that we had a few hours sleep before heading down to Dover for the 19 quid ferry at 4am. We followed the POI file for the Trois Pignon all the way down through Northern France without hassle before at the last minute following signs for La Musardiere campsite, thank god for SatNav, it made the journey very easy especially as Natalie slept for its entirety. On arrival it was very hot and we pitched the (tiny) tent without trouble. We both decided we would have a rest day on arrival because of our stupidly early ferry so we sat around for the rest of the day. It started chucking it down early evening and was still going the next morning. Crap.
I had initially wanted to start our climbing at Hatues-Plaines but a quick rece showed it to be wet, which I was expecting. Instead we headed over to Cul De Chien, the boulders were dry and we began climbing despite the grey clouds that were looming. We started on the kiddie's circuit and Natalie impressed me by having no problem whatsover with the first five or so yellow's I pointed her to.
One particularly heavy shower hit mid afternoon so we headed around to l'autre toit for some shelter, I had a quick look at a few of the problems but didn't get overly psyched. On the way past we stopped at the firs section of Roche aux Sabots where I pointed Natalie at a few harder problems, not too long after that she got up a blue, it wasn't elegant but that doesn't really matter. I did a few of the problems that I could remember enjoying in the past, including bazooka joe, its a really nice rock up and lock for those who don't know it on the side of the jet set boulder, well worth a look.
Over the next few days the weather improved, we ended up moving the tent as we were literally surrounded on all sides by a large french party at one time. The sat nav well and truely died, the sound doesn't seem to work at all now and I can't figure out what the hell is wrong with it, it only narrowly escaped being ejected from the car window on one of the faster, more fun french D-roads.
We visited loads of venues, Hautes-Plaines, Buthiers, Apremont-Envers, Beauvais, Cul de chien, 95.2, Cuvier (what a mess this was, you could literally follow the empty condom wrappers from the car park to cortomaltese) and Sabots.
Natalie did well on all of the circuits, doing extremely well on the blue next to Miss KGB at 95.2. It took her a while to get used to the significantly smaller footholds compared to the bolt-a-ledges used at the climbing works but that was expected.
During the week we kept checking the forecast in Switzerland and it wasn't good, rain, showers and an impending thunderstorm so after a while I decided that taking it easy in Font wasn't a good idea just in case we didn't end up going on the swiss leg of our trip. In the evenings we headed to specific venues for me to try harder problems, given the summer temps I tried to be sensible and stick to the crimpy problems on boulders covered in limestone or easier slopey problems. I was quite happy with the ticks given my long lay off and the temps although not so happy with my performance on one problem. Magic Bus.
The day I tried this it was HOT so I waited until evening and eventually found the cave its located in. Initially I tried a sequence that was pretty much all power. Undercuts at the back, right hand to good scooped foot hold and again to the undercut on the lip of the cave, left foot on good foot hold, power up to sloper then the finish. It wasn't working and I was sure there must be some serious toe-hooking faggotry to be had. After a while I tried another sequence, undercuts then LH to crimp, right foot out wide, left heel/toe on undercuts, then RH into undercut on lip, it felt like it should be much easier but at the crucial moment each time one of either of my feet popped. It started to get annoying so I opted to go back to the pure power sequence, this time stopping to catch an undercut pocket (completely the wrong way mind you) before powering for the sloper. After a few tries I caught the pocket and it all felt very easy...Damn annoying, really need to sort out my toe hooking so I can use them well rather than opting for an akward heel instead.
Earlier on in the week we popped over to cuvier, did Cortomaltese because its an amazing problem, nobody was around to hiss/spit/boo as I crimped the hell out of the ripples on the lower slopers. Then we went to do the Marie Rose, I have to admite that on the first attempt I bailed due to being an absoloute wuss with my leg, after sitting around for 5 mins or so being thoroughly pissed off about this I got back on it and clawed my way over the top using the very sweaty slopers, I'd hoped this could be a hard problem for Nat to try during the week but i'd forgotten how cr*p those slopers get in the heat. Oh well.
Anyway this post must be tres long already? (boring as well no doubt) so i'll try and shorten the next bit. At the end of the week the weather broke and we were left with a difficult decision, 7 hours over to Magic Wood where the weather was looking poor, or home (via amsterdam). We opted for the latter, I was unwilling to taint Nat's first proper climbing trip with a week of potentially horrible weather. Dave Mason sent me a txt saying that he was managing to climb between the showers, if it had just been me then I would of gone for it, however driving 14 hours to get wet for no reason didn't seem like fun.
The latter half of the trip isn't climbing based so i'll try and keep it in one short paragraph. We went to Amsterdam, via Brussels. Spent a great deal of time walking around seeing the sights for a few days before heading back via Rotterdam (shithole) before returning to Dunkerque. Just before getting to the ferry terminal a porsche GT3 from a British Driving school overtook me at a ridiculous speed. Amazing. We then drove back to Watford where we made good inroads on the wine we brought back and I finally succumbed to being the designated driver and driving the 730d automatic, that thing is just ridiculously large (suprised it doesn't say Boeing somewhere on the side), and has automatic everything including handbrake, all you have to do is press stop and go...
Nat's punto did admirably on the trip increasing its lifetime average from 57mpg to 67mpg (god knows what it would have average for the trip alone 70 something?), before the side window popped out yeterday... although some shoving fixed that in no time.
Right I need to get back up the school as i'm feeling weak.
Sorry about the length of the post.
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