Sunday 22 February 2009

St Bees, the patron saint of Cumbria

Went to St Bees today with the G and Bammers. First time for all of us so excitement and psyche was high. Well it was for G and I, Bammers was just a bit fed up of sharing the boot with a bouldering mat for 3 hours....
Anyway we got there, down the slippery slope of dooooooom, G celebrated our safe descent by flinging himself headfirst down a rocky gully, good skill. I went for a more traditional celebration of a sit down and a coffee, I'm proper old skool me. We decided to warm up on Headbanger. First attempt I missed the slappy first move, second attempt I got to the (easy) top-out then turned into a moron who had never climbed before, didn't know what he was doing up here and frankly didn't like it, dropped off, had a word with myself, third go crushed. Gets 7B in the guide, I'd probably go for 7A+ personally. But then G failed to make anything even vaguely ressembling progress and he can crush things, sometimes, honest, I've seen it with my own eyes and everything. To be fair G did seem to struggle with positioning his right foot correctly in a heel-toe-y type situation for the first move. He claims this is because he's tall, but maybe he's just shit? Who's to know.... No, I'm sure it's just he's tall.
Anyway the G wanted to get on Clash of the Titans. I didn't. I thought it looked hard and reachy in photos and video clips, and in the flesh I thought it looked... well even harder and reachier. I vaguely waved my hands at the starting holds before say "no not for me, but you try it as much as you like G, I'll just watch these chaps trying Undercooke, my that's a good looking problem". A couple of moments later we moved on...
Undercooke is ace, took two goes to crush this one but this time G put in his angry eyes and joined the party in a footless sty-leeeeee, go beast. I think this felt very similar to Headbanger so would think 7A+ ish. However it did seem very reachy so a less midget scaled person may find it easier, I think it gets 7A in the guide, but everybody knows that there all written by giant men.
After that we did a 7A prow/arete thing that would have been easy if you didn't have to work so hard keeping your back from dabbing the adjacent block. Then we did Fishermans Dyno (nice), I fell of the top of Hueco Crack Sitter (twice) and we both failed to do an arete.
All in all a nice venue and a nice day. I'd go back, even though it's a long way.

(P.S. St Bees isn't really the patron saint of Cumbria, she's the patron saint of monocles, stoats and sideburns)

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