Back to the coal face.

A combination of illness, visiting friends and Spud and the D-unit falling foul of infection meant that I haven't climbed for two weeks. Certainly the longest non-climbing stint I've had over the last twelve months by a significant margin. There weren't even any sessions on the board and even my (admittedly very minimal and ill researched) stretching regime fell by the wayside. But today was a day of freedom, the family had been boxed up and posted off to the in-laws and I was feeling, well average.
First thing this morning was spent trying to establish where, if anywhere, had escaped the rain, mist and melt water. Enquiries were not yielding te positive responses I so craved, but amongst this there was one beacon of hope. A turd of grit that appears to occupy a climatic bubble. Of course it could only be Almscliff. Now this place takes a lot of stick from lots of people but for me it is a great bouldering crag. If anyone else can name me a crag of similar proportions containing so many great lines at so many grades. It covers the full spectrum from the very easy through to the nigh on impossible. That in itself would be enough to cement it's classic status. But it goes one better than that, it is (and this is purely my opinion and I have on stats to back this up) the grit crag with the most reliable conditions. In fact I would imagine that it is THE most conditions reliable crag in the country with a decent spectrum of problem types and grades. In fact I'm not surprised it's popular, I'm surprised it's not more popular.
Anyhoos enough bigging up the Cliff, and on to the climbing. My Ciff aims list consists of Keelhaul and Jess's Roof. However when I got there they were both wet (typical, I write a rant about the dryness of Almscliff on a day when it's wet), also it was windy so I felt cold and yet it was also quite warm so the friction felt poor. I decided to have a dabble at Streaky's on the Egg block. Bad move. I should have found some shelter, drank my coffee and told the dog a story. Instead I got tired and demotivated trying a damp-ish problem in poor conditions with my mats getting blown every which way. Arse. Anyway then Guru and Sam turned up and conditions started to improve. We headed up to DWR and I got stuck into DWR-LH. Conditions were OK, but not great but I ended up with a workable sequence that I think should go fairly quickly next time (in better conditions), it's a pretty basic sequence and not at all elegant but it works so tra-la-laa. Then I got tired and powered out so left the party to head home for pizza. As I departed I noticed that the Keel block was dry, and well populated with climbers, bum. Oh well, in reality leaping on an 8A project after a two week lay-off and illness probably wouldn't have been desperately productive so not to worry. Hopefully get more done this week, and maybe even tick something. Quite psyched about plans to head over to Wales but we'll see what the weather holds....

Anyway I've decided to unveil the top tier of my Font ticklist. This is basically 4 problems that I'm really up for trying. This list does not discount other problems, it may be that I'll try these, get shut down and move on to others on a more exhaustive list (or, hope of hopes I'll crush the 4 then move on to the 8B list). There is also a lower tier list which is of (generally) easier problems, but which is vast. And I'm not going to be typing that out anytime soon. I've picked th 4 problems which have really grabbed my interest, they may not be the best for me or the classics or soft or hard or whatever. They are just problems that appeal to me for reasons that are numerous and doubtless undefineable. Anyway this is they:
1) Noir Desir (7C) - Rempart
2) Beaux Quartiers (8A) - Bouligny
3) Toit De Greau (8A) - Greau
4) Fata Morgana (8A) - Long Vaux

There's a few things to note. First off, one of them isn't 8A. But I really want to do it, it looks amazing. And anyway even though this whole thing was about doing an 8A it really isn't about that it's about setting an objective which focuses my aims within bouldering. 8A is just a convenient marker, in much the same way as picking a specific problem would be convenient, but ultimately limiting. Anyway this isn't a job, I can move my goalposts will-nilly. These are 4 problems that satisfy the main thrust of my objective. In that they are steep (so not something I would previously have tried, let alone succeeded on) they are in Font (which is important) and they are harder than I have climbed in Font in recent years.
Am I setting myself up for a fall by naming these problems? No, I don't think so. I'm just letting the two or three people who read this know which problems are top of hit list. Should I fail to manage any of them I'm not going to die of shame or lose sponsirship or have my child taken off me by social services. I'll just come home and get back to work.
There's always next year....