Dream of White Horses (fancy a spot of riding?)

Very tired today after having a monster weekend at Gogarth. We left Sheffield at 10pm on Fri night after sorting plenty of last minute van things (including a stove). We arrived later at the South Stack lighthouse to see nought but fog and a beam of light cutting through it. I tried to capture this but failed miserably (repeat after me; manual focus).

Lighthouse, Gogarth, South Stack from Bennp2000 on Vimeo.

I also spent a small age trying to figure out how to use rear curtain sync to take a photo of Nat with a slow burn and then flash her in. Again I failed as canon doesn't offer that off-camera apparently?

Day 1 (or Saturday as its more commonly reffered to) was spent at Wen Zawn and the nearby areas. For the popularity of our first route we were (pleasantly) surprised to be the first people on the crag and the only team that appeared later went on Wen anyway. As everyone surely does, we viewed the Zawn from the promontory which somehow managaes to offer a viewpoint that reveals none of the obvious bedding planes you can see instantly from the ab. I'd advise gearing up somewhere other than the top of the ab itself, the approach and scramble down is atmospheric to say the least.

Dream itself is fantastic, the final pitch crosses territory that it really shouldn't (at the grade) and set the tone for the remainder of the routes (and moreover the weekend). Later on we headed to the Britomartis area and did a few routes here. A route finding accident left me on slightly harder territory at one point but apart from knowing I was in the wrong place I was fairly happy.

Not a terrible photo given you can't tell what you're taking using our horrendous little Fujifilm, the lack of viewfinder makes it impossible to know what you're taking a picture of when you're outside. It is however, waterproof should it go for a swim (I felt like testing this at more that one point).

Some helpful sole asked to use our ab rope which of course was not an issue until later that day when I came to take it up and found they'd left a nice big overhand knot in the bottom of it. Of course it got stuck and I got pretty angry.

The weather on Day 1 was fantastic (as above) with little wind. However Day 2, was somewhat contrasting. Despite the sky and ocean being stupendously blue, the wind made the whole Zawn a lot colder and a trifle more intimidating. The wind literally emptied my chalkbag as a gust came through the arch and straight upwards, showering the top of the crag in superchalk. I could see on a colder day with stormier sea's that these areas could get rather intimidating to say the least.

As Nat decided that The Flytrap (despite my best persuasion techniques i.e. Bitburger) wasn't one for her after our slightly harder route finding fail the day before we opted to do another route on the Zawn. Concrete chimney. Again this takes a line through territory that looks rather unlikely at the ameanable grade that it gets and it felt fairly exposed on the lower arete with the wind doing its best to try and unerve us both. It failed with me (medal?) but mightily pissed me off as I found I had to place a cam to keep what should have been a bomber sling in place! Nat was a little unnerved and below the final pitch we had a quick chat to check she was ok continuing (instead if slinking off onto Dream). It wasn't wholly clear if she was entirely happy but I couldn't be arsed waiting for it to clear anyway. I'm glad we didn't slink off as crossing through another unlikely set of overlapping slabs and roofs is one of the finest pitches I've ever done. Afterwards we called it quits and headed back Sheffside exhausted, the van having served us perfectly over the weekend.

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