After a less than profitable week in Scotland, I returned for one last long week-end and finally managed to eek out some good grade IV lines on the Ben - my first proper ice climbs on the holy mountain and confidence givers for the future, pity winter is now over for me, despite the weather continuing to play silly devils with a cold blast in early April ...
For me the focus is now on summer rock and to that end we sneaked in an Easter week trip to Southern France with free accommodation courtesy of some friends of ours who now own two properties out there. We were based in Rasigueres, near the climbing areas of Tautavel and Vingrau and despite slightly variable weather and not a little over indulgence in wine (with a Vinyard cave literally on the doorstep it would have been rude not to !), we managed 3 days of relatively warm, sunny climbing and a day of Via Ferrata - just what the doctor ordered :-)
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| Lovely day at the Gorge |
The grades are always interesting - I generally find that routes on the continent climb a little harder for a given grade and Tautavel is no exception, plus the element of uncertainty with the French subdividing grades at both 4 and 5 into a,b,c unlike UK where we only seem to start at 6 for some reason.
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| Chris back down to earth |
However, this wasn't purely about personal climbing, I was also providing tuition, assistance and putting up ropes for a number of novice climbers in our group, including our friend's 13 year old son who had never climbed outside before, so I got some good practice for my instructing skills, which was a nice bonus. We even managed to get Dave (Chris's Dad) on the Via Ferrata, which he thoroughly enjoyed despite starting with some trepidation.
So all in all, a great trip which will hopefully set me up nicely for a bumper summer of climbing, new PB grades, completing my qualifying climbs for MIA and getting some outdoor ML days in.
