Bouldering at St. Bees..

bit of a change of plan simply as I arrived at Luke's to find Keswick busy and we therefore thought it might be a bit of a pain to drive through the Lakes to Wallabarrow on bank holiday Monday..so we elected to go to Castle Rock South - home to some nice looking amenably graded routes...oops..

Having shelled out lots of money on guidebooks for the Italy trip! we arrived at the crag and found it was not busy - it was heaving...even worse was the person climbing a 25m route in two pitches - thus holding up most of the other parties on the crag. This not being to our liking - and having the advantage of living here! we elected to dive back to Keswick and head off to St. Bees to go bouldering. I'd been there once before and been really impressed, as I was this trip - not simply as there was a nice sun out! Luke got his crash pad and I "borrowed" Chris's (his flatmate) pad and we had a good few hours bouldering. On sighting a good V1 problem was good- but the highlight was doing two probs with the technical grade of 6a - a grade I only did twice in my previous climbing life. Granted; I have done 8 problems of this grade in the last couple of years and only 1 was as difficult was Y-Front at Bowden Doors; but it is still a good boost to the confidence given that I am not a great boulderer - lacking the brute power and being quite heavy. I felt at the wall on Fri I was climbing well...and it was good to see it translate to outdoors....need to do it on routes now though.

There is a video of me on one of the 6a's ,which I will post later.