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Life back in the UK - 4th May 2009
Here I am sitting in a café on Portland drinking coffee, quite nice really…admittedly it’s not Spain but…what can you do.

The end of my Spanish trip turned out to be a complete washout and came with the ubiquitous epic! As soon as I redpointed Kalea Borroka (KB), the weather took a turn for the worse; i.e. complete downpours for days on end, with no dry rock anywhere.

Tim and I headed up to Rodellar, I was excited about this, as it’s somewhere I haven’t spent much time but looks amazing. As I was fit, I was psyched for the long steep, tufa routes; I’d been here twice before but the tufas had always been wet. Well, this time was not going to be any different unfortunately. Also, I caught a cold bug thing and was feeling pretty rotten for a fair few days.

But the epic was another van disaster. Poor van, she’d done well but had been struggling more and more with the Spanish hilly winding roads, until on our way up to Rodellar she decided she’d had enough and came to a standstill. She wouldn’t go forward anymore, so we were stranded in the middle of nowhere.

But to cut a long story short, it turned out the clutch had given up the ghost, so we were relayed to Rodellar over the Easter break (no work could be done). The rain stopped all play so it was fairly miserable, then the clutch was fixed the day we had to leave Spain to get up to Dunkirk for the ferry. It was all a bit stressful especially as we timed it to coincide with the French fisherman blockading the ferry ports and thought we wouldn’t have been able to get back into blighty. But luck was on our side and the fisherman stopped the blockade at lunchtime on our day of travel, phew!

The weather in Sheffield has been really nice since I’ve been back which has made settling back to life in a city a lot easier. I think both Kodo and I have found it strange being back in a house again and not just having the freedom of the outdoors accessible at all times. It’s strange how we shut ourselves off from nature and the outside world, securing ourselves against who knows what, no wonder there our many of us who yearn to take part in the outdoors.

I was very keen for my climbing, until I got back. Obviously, being ill and the long journey didn’t help my motivation and it took me a little while to recover but I’ve found it hard to find my psyche again since being back.

In fact since redpointing KB which was nearly a month ago, I’ve climbed about three times! I had a terrible day at Raven Tor, which didn’t boost my enthusiasm. I thought I’d got that place sussed but evidently not! I was dire, so bad in fact that I was on a route that I have previously redpointed and I couldn’t even see how it was possible to climb the moves. It was very disheartening and made me realise that although I had been climbing a lot, I had certainly lost power- which for me is always the first thing to go. UK routes are a very different breed from European sport routes, as UK routes are shorter so consequently are more powerful to pack the hard climbing in for the grade. Although I was a bit depressed, I realised I was going to have to get down to some training if I wanted to climb well here.

But within a week or so I was on the road again. The BMC employed Libby Peter and myself to present some rock climbing essentials lectures and masterclasses. We are in the middle of them at the moment having done the southern leg, next week we will be up North.

It has been good fun so far and well received and as I said I am in Portland for a few days, which is a bonus, I wasn’t expecting. The weather forecast was good for the bank holiday down here, so I have been here for a few days. It’s been nice, I’ve caught up with some good people, climbed some good routes but the highlight was yesterday, I onsighted a f7c which is definitely the best route I’ve done on Portland, if not one of the best sport routes of this grade in the country, it’s called Tennessee. I was really pleased with this, as I had to try very hard on the crux and was convinced I was coming off but somehow managed to hang on (the holds I was using were fairly non existent). Also, having had quite a long break, I can still climb!

Once my lectures are over next week I am going to try and do some training and boost my power levels. When I was in Spain thinking about what I would do when I got home, I was psyched by the idea of climbing in Yorkshire, maybe Malham, as I haven’t been for about five years so I’ll see if I can fit that in too.

But I have to admit, if I could I’d be back out to Europe tomorrow. The climbing suits me and the rock is fantastic and there are so many inspiring routes to climb. But…even I- nomadic climber extraordinaire- have responsibilities, so the UK it is for a while.