The love affair with High Tor continues although the honeymoon period will soon pass as the majority of challenges that remain are outside my comfort zone and if truth be told, my skill set. There's a handful of routes I'd like to finish off, and a couple of the fully bolted offerings should offer some respite to my perma-pumped calf muscles. However, I have to say I've been disappointed by a few of the last routes ticked. Many have big reputations and are firmly set in history yet I've found the climbing of average interest with seemingly less quality available than at the humble level of E2/3 and surprisingly, in parts, a greater degree of polish!

Yet, I shouldn't complain too much. I'm happy to be progressing at a steady pace (one much more rapid than I could reasonably expect from any other discipline), even if in reality my target might have been viewed by some as a reasonable starting point.

In between the showers we salvaged another day by climbing on the newly (ish) bolted right wing. Some of it is in typical style; bolted when realistically it should have been left to fall down, yet between these routes are a few hidden gems. A fingery 7a, an E5 with the worst lower off I've seen (tiny tree, loose block in front, sling around both), and another 7a prow. These are worth bearing in mind for an easy day or for somewhere likely to be shielded from showers elsewhere in the Peak. It should be noted that there appear to be nesting birds on a number of routes, anything with a large crack to be precise. Rock quality is generally poor surrounding the 1st bolts, beyond this things firm up.

It seems the summer is fast approaching and I'm looking forward to venturing further afield on my ticklist (Matlock Bath only retains interest for a short period). First up will undoubtedly be Gogarth where T-Rex and Flytrap eagerly await my flounderings (cam sizes for the first much appreciated?). Beyond that the Axe must feature highly; searching Google for photos last night I came across a few stunning pictures (one graces the cover of Ground Ups North Wales Select) which left be both nervous and inspired.

I made a rash decision with camera's this week but I'll make sure to get some worthy shots before revealing too much.

Klanks

...or 'Calanques' [if you choose to pronounce (and spell) it correctly] is located twixt Marseille and Cassis on the fantastically warm Cote D'Azur. This holiday was picked tactically; firstly we hadn't left the country in all too long, secondly, 'Calanques' is one of the few areas whilst we were living in a van that people kept referring to, which we hadn't really heard anything else before (Ablon being another) and finally, we have (had) big aims for later on in the year (Yosemite).

Before venturing off, we finally purchased a decent compact for our newly found multi-pitch fetish. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 is quite frankly the nuts, buy an S95 if you don't fancy a hot shoe, if you do look no further (quite pleased with how that came out, given it involved scotch-tape and a piece of A4 paper):

Now, there are two main facets to Calanques. Medium sized multi-pitch pseudo sport climbs (mixed bolts and gear) and steep burly jug hauling roofs (the third facet is car crime). Sadly the middle of the three all face south and we only made that mistake one day!

I presume Calanques means inlet or something similar, there are a number of them (7?) around Marseille and most offer climbing of sorts. The main area, Calanques d'En Vau (pictured above) is reached after a 40min or so downhill (N.B. this means uphill on the return!) stroll. There are climbs on both side with mainly easy pinnacles on the LHS and more involved (but not too taxing) routes on the RHS, or the 'Grand Face du Rappel'. This stays in shade from mid-morning. Arriving on a bank-holiday weekend wasn't ideal, the car park was rammed and our initial peace at being on holiday was smashed about 5 minutes after parking up. Having forgotten something in the car (did I lock it syndrome?), I returned to find two fishy looking Frenchmen, in leather gloves fiddling with the car next to ours. They look surprised, walked off briskly and then loitered until it became evident I wasn't leaving my oil-burner until they'd f*cked off. They did.

One of the main aims of the trip was to become more efficient. Last year (or was it the one before) when Nat and I embarked down into the Verdon it was very much like I was leading, taking the responsibility that came with it, and she'd follow diligently. It worked, but fast it was not. With her confidence growing (and performance climbing steadily too, although stern British grades sometimes seem to leave her doubting this), this was the place to get going properly, equal share of the load.

Over the coming week (due to lack of scope caused by 25' heat) we pretty much ticked the place. It seems to me that the French haven't yet removed their blinkers when it comes to Calanques. Most 'big' routes follow obvious lines of weakness and there's barely anything that warrants a 7. Given the immense amount of rock I just can't understand this. Its like two High Tor's stacked on top and about 15 times as long and that's just one one side! The other side of the Calanques has only just started being devloped. If you are so inclined, pack a Hilti and jump to it.

Furthermore, whilst I'm at it (and I might as well get this off my chest), I found the Rockfax guide to be a particular low point. They've made the assumption that taking a rack is a personal choice and what might be acceptable for one, mightn't for another, this said they then throw the 'small rack' symbol at anything. I found this to cover A0 style bolt-ladders to pretty much totally trad pitches. The same can be said for the loose rock symbol which seems to have been omitted from some particularly loose pitches. The guide descriptions are particularly lacking too; "the more direct and harder finish", fantastic, now which line of holds/bolts does it follow? I urge you to buy the local topo instead.

The fixed gear is another funny situation. Not quite as odd as the likes of Peak-limestone-trad, yet funny nonetheless. Some routes are fully equipped, others are barely equipped and it almost feels as if they're trying to cultivate a trad-feel rather than letting the rock (and natural placements) dictate the feel of the climb. This seems slightly insane given most routes follow obvious cracks and could easily be protected in an alternate manner.

Descent from the Grand face is made via either abbing down the line (N.B. the state of many of the fixed ab points shown in the guide is poor), or making a short walk, a single ab (where the French chose to ab off a single bolt (no maillon, no ring etc.) instead of a giant 1.5m diameter tree.

The weather was kind over the 11 days or so we were away. 20-25' heat during the day and little in the way of rain. We did however receive tow soakings, both minutes after topping out which led to a lot of wet gear and a pretty memorable walk home in the dark, lightening all around. Leaving the sanctity of the valley to get to the car was 'interesting'.

Before leaving for France, Nat and I both began reminiscing about the Gorges du Verdon. For me, it was the best place I visited on my entire trip; its everything I'm not. Big, bold and technical. Just getting over the exposure seemed like a decent tick, even if I didn't do anything all that hard (for anyone thinking of something hard, Graphique will be the airiest 8a I've ever tried, its not easy either). Due to this thinking, throughout the trip we kept a close eye on the forecast for 'la Palud' (thanks to UKB for the info re: drying). It didn't look good, everyday it rained a LOT and I was sure the cumulative effect would leave the gorge, especially the target (La Demande, the first route to breach L'Escales [i.e. bottom to top up the big bit], following a crack and then legendary exit chimneys). i.e. read drainage.

Saturday looked good, and despite needing to drive for ~10 hours the next day in time for a ferry at 6pm seemed like a great plan. Friday evening we drove to the verdon (2 hours extra), enjoyed the best pizza in the world, a beer or so and then slept a rather uncomfortable night in the car (bad bad plan).

Neither of us slept. My excuse is basically over excitement. Nat just found it bloody uncomfortable. When dawn broke we romped through the wet tunnels to find ourselves at the foot of L'escales just after 7 (giving us roughly 12 hours should we be 'that' slow). Sadly the shortcomings of our plan showed through immediately. Nat looked terrible on the first pitch and quickly became unhappy and returned to Terra-firma. Frustrated I romped up, linking what we think were the first two pitches to save some time. Nat followed looking timid and tired and when she finally reached the belay it was obvious that continuing on, although possible would lead to some fairly frustrating climbing. I suggested we call it quits and return fully fit. She wasn't happy as expected.

At about midday it became apparent just how stupid our plan was, driving in the general direction of North, neither of us could concentrate and we were forced to stop and sleep. Idiotic.

Hopefully this isn't all sounding too negative (the holiday was fantastic)?

Financially it looks like the original Yosemite plan is a little self-indulgent at this time, and given the disparity between climbing as a team, we both think it could heavily benefit from some consolidation. On the plus side, the Verdon is much closer, much cheaper and I have the sneaking suspicion that, should we venture away from cracks onto the more fingery, technical walls (Pichenbule), Nat will excel as she did yesterday upon High Tor. Rat fingers.

E5?

It seems I've been fairly busy since the last post. The 3 year funding period on my studies has now ceased and I saw last Fri as my absolute stopping point for simulation work. I managed to hit that deadline early, by about a day.

Not so long ago, both Nat and I took out Foundry memberships (3 months). The weather hadn't been so great and we were both rushing all over the place and it seemed to make sense. Now it doesn't. I simply can't believe how much time I've managed to accumulate on Grit over the past few weeks, so much so I can barely remember the last time I pulled on plastic (I'm no doubt kitten weak).

I've also managed to accumulate a satisfying amount of stars from routes that really deserved some attention in the logical order of things rather than now. However, as I was reminded on Saturday night "better late than never..."

Its here that I'd like to post my current long term aim; I'd love to be solid at E5. Not able to get up one or two but solid. Like Reeve but without the fluffy hair. Irrespective of style, rock type or angle. This popped up into discussion twice on Saturday night, once with a boulderer and once with someone I'd class as a pretty outstanding all-rounder. The conflicting opinions on the difficulty of this aim made me smile. Trad is easy, right?

Currently this aim fits in nicely with life and play. It allows Nat and I to climb together a lot of the time and really, it doesn't require much in the way of training. Simply a will to get out and try. Consolidation seems to be the name of the game and I'm just about getting into territory where life becomes quite interesting, esepcially on Grit (is it just me or is the floor always a little too close for comfort?).

This brings me to my next point:

At the back end of last week I found myself at Black Rocks, camera in hand for this:

The forecast said it was to be "the hottest day of 2011 so far" which somehow didn't seem to affect the Solution wearing Italian cruising up Gaia. It did however effect me. Driving back through the Peak district I was suddenly very concious of how much I like Sheffield and the surrounding area. Ok, so Matlock Bath shouldn't set anyone's world alight but looking up at the evening sunshine on High Tor followed by a quick nip through Chatsworth and many Fawn crossing the road, to the last of the evening light hitting the grit edges neighbouring the city; all left me with the strong desire to remain living in Sheffield. Something that both Nat and I have discussed recently with a view of moving to Leeds.

Thankfully she feels the same.

Photies

Consistency

Consistency doesn't seem to be my game at the minute (apart from consistently posting the below photos that is).
The weekend was good and we spent it pootling about trying to capture some vague psych for the brown rock. It worked, although nothing (remotely)hard was targeted; instead it was like doing a good days circuiting.

Saturday was Stanage far right where once Nat and I had stopped bickering like pro's we both enjoyed what was mainly sideways shuffling.



Sunday was a much shorter day and mostly involved playing with flashes with a bit of climbing thrown in. Its nice to tick a few more bits and bobs off the list of glaring omissions although I've now done purple haze and its variants a worrying number of times.

I think the few things that remain (or were added) to the list, reside on Staffordshire brown stuff and require a fair bit more effort both in driving (being awake) and pulling (Tetris being the main target I think).

Back inside I've fallen into the Tues/Thurs routine quite happily although its been mostly spent at the Works (the Foundry got a little dull). I've been trying my best to use the deviant comp style problems to try and improve my total failure when it comes to toe-hooking. Thankfully its working well and on Tues I managed to tick off a few bits that seem like a walk in the park to most people; they were a hell of a struggle!

I also had a brief flirtation with the board and I liked it. The cruel tease that she is however was evident last night as I waved at small holds that I hadn't a hope of holding. (5+3)c Mawson demo'd the problems and is looking in good shape for the upcoming Malham season.

This week I managed to add yet another flash to my arsenal of photographic equipment and for a pittance (£5, it would have been £2.50 if the other unit didn't contain decaying batteries). Whats even more remarkable than a photographic bargain is the fact that I survived playing around with electronics (the unit needed modifying) with no electrocution, only temporary blindness from firing a full pop about an inch from my face!

Futility

Most people (if there's anyone still out there?) are probably using Feed readers of some sort and therefore didn't notice that the blog had been turned to 'Private' and that my mindless spilling of ill conceived thoughts hadn't infected their brain for a few months.

I hadn't gone all shy nor was I mid way through signing an exclusive deal with 'Eat Natural' or in my case 'My Protein or Wine', simply put; I wanted to get more work done and like many other things a blog is a way to waste time. Albeit a small piece of time but enough that when you add all of your little vices together they create a black hole of productivity. Its not that you don't achieve anything, its just not directly useful.

Forums are the worst for this, idle chatter or otherwise searching for knowledge on something that ten years ago you'd have just paid for. BUT now I know where the washer fluid hose connections are, isn't that right skoda?

Another example; I was recently dragged kicking and screaming into 2011 with an Android phone. I hadn't been missing twitter (on which I finally concede Dobbin was correct), weather updates, or even to the minute updates on my inbox but now I have it, I use it. I've also spent a great deal of time fiddling with various setups, reading about custom ROM's and even java based app development. Not only that but I've set up my array of recently acquired tech so I can stream my media throughout the house... and so that it'll sync a few playlists when it comes in range of my home wifi. Not content with this, I then wasted a good portion of a day trying to get my media streaming to my TV via an xbox, and naturally using a different media server (as XBOX 360's only seem to digest .wmv) that can transcode.

Iteration 1 of this procedure led to breaking my OS on two computers, the firmware of my router and a whole lot of wasted time. Iteration 2 worked well, although the 15m ethernet cable is trying its best to break my legs.

Still not content I set around setting up Tversity to forward my media to outside my network and even 3g. For no particular reason, other than I wanted to see if it worked and telling myself I'd use it at 'work', at which I have spotify anyway.

In a moment of stupidity I threw the custom (non supported) firmware from Magic Lantern onto my DSLR, ok it adds a lot of features that are really funky but that body wasn't cheap and I'm hardly a member of slackjaw. In fact, apart from 'tests' I've done very little with the video capability of the camera. I've read an awful lot.

As you can see, I'm not doing so well in the whole writing up phase of this project.

Climbing has been on the back foot; since going well at the Foundry I quickly became bored with the problems and trundled off for a love/hate session at the works (a different world). I had tried going out but I seem to have become a little soft as it was quite frankly unpleasant. Three problems in to the works session it remembered who I was and quickly tore something in my side as punishment, an intercostal probably but it hurt regardless. Ironically this then bound me to the works for the last 3 weeks or so as I've nursed it back to a modicum of health. Trying to alternatively lift your feet off the floor using an undercut and failing is slightly depressing.

Despite all of this, it is improving and up until the drunken exploits of this weekend (Jagermeister FFS) my works technique was going through some kind of boot camp. Having your feet swing off and instinctively stopping the motion leads to a mighty dose of pain which in turn soon becomes an incentive to find out exactly why that third toe hook isn't staying put!

In the spirit of time wasting I'll stop there, hopefully you stopped much much earlier.

VRS

Last weekend began with a whistlestop tour of the North half of England.

Sheffield > Liverpool > Darlington > Leeds > Sheffield > Stockport > Home then on Monday a quick 1-2 back to Stockport to pick up our newest car:

Before this we had a little too much money tied up in vehicles with the Van and the Punto (which didn't seem to be attracting many lookers, none in fact). Thankfully they both sold, and fairly painlessly too leaving us room to economise slightly and be happy.
I have to say, I'm made up with this one. Like usual I spent an age trawling relative forums looking for the regular faults so that on inspection I knew what I was on about.

It was quite funny in some cases to see what some people considered to be 'Great' condition; I'd have said: parked repeatedly by a blind person in one case .'FSH' (Full service history), being a business card for a Skoda salesman who would "tell me what its had done" was another. Shame as the optional leather was rather tasty although not very grippy in the corners.

The one we ended up with I'd passed over on autotrader due to it only having three pictures, all of which were bad and showed nothing. After viewing the rest and a lengthy phone call with the backstreet dealer proved he knew a thing or two, we took a chance and slipped over the snake once more expecting disapointment. This one was perfect, gleaming bodywork, clean interior, smooth power, no pulling no torque steer (different engines in the '06 models producing a much smoother torque curve and 138bhp standard). The ability to remap these up to 170bhp without any hassle whatsoever has been on my mind and with my free-thinking insurance company it isn't a problem anyway but I honestly have to say this car doesn't need it and likely won't get it.

Already we're seeing 56mpg and I havent stopped using my heavy right foot despite the white stuff that seems to have stopped everything else. I feel a bit stupid that I discounted these when we bought the last Punto, they may have a few less toys but what they do have is so much better (side note: why on earth has skoda released the new VRS with a piddly petrol?) and thank f*ck its not a golf. Perfect as they are, unless its sporting a GTI/V5 badge (or upwards) Golfs are automotive beige.

Hopefully I'm on the money here and we can keep this one a while, I'm getting tired of buying and selling cars. 7 in as many years is a bit silly.

Nat was off the rest of the week and as I am snowed under with work (it isn't going well) we decided to stay around and sort out the many chores that are mounting up and finally sort the rest of the flat out. 20 ish litres of paint later and we've only got one more room to go.

My elbow started playing up before this week so I've taken some time off; this has done nothing. Tonight, after seeking the advice of someone qualified I think the prognosis isn't that bad. Pronator curls here we come!

...Furthermore, I have to say I'm blown away by Dave-wh0-isn't-a-racist 's latest ticklist. That man is on fire. I wonder if I buy some skull candy, start wearing camo and walk around with a questionable hand position whether I'll get stronger?