Living for the weekend...

Saturday morning I dropped the wife and offspring off at Liverpuddle airport as they head over to the in-laws. Once deposited I headed West to try my luck in the cave. The cave is somewhere I've been meaning to visit for a while. I've heard all manner of different things about it. Some good, some not so good. Everybody tends to start describing it in the same way.
There's no real obvious lines
Arbitary starts and finishes
Spanks you on a first visit

And then depending on the individual expressing the opinion will either say it's amazing or it's a bit shit. Different folks, different strokes I suppose. Anyway anything that can be so consistently described and yet give such variety of opinion has to be worth investigating, if only to allow me to form my own view.

Saturday afternoon in Llandudno was B U S Y. Some sort of Victorian funfair thing going on. Anyway once I'd managed to get through and parked up at the cave I went for a nosey. I was meeting Sam there, he's been before so could show me the lines etc. But I was there way before Sam so got stuck in to what some other folks were trying which turned out to be Lou Ferino and Rockattrocity. Then Sam turned up with Baz and was trying Trigger Cut.
I found one move of Lou Ferino desperate but the rest of it pretty steady. Rockattrocity I should have done but dropped it at the end. Sam was looking good on Trigger Cut, he hadn't done it when I left but he was looking very solid on it so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he did it later on.

So what did I make of the cave? Well I didn't leave feeling like I'd been completely spanked, but then I was expecting to get shut down big time so expectations were low. I did think that it was all a bit no clear lines/random starts and finishes though. Overall.....hmmm... lets say not my favourite venue. I don't feel in any great rush to return, though I probably will to get Rockattrocity done at some point, but then will I return? I dunno. It's a long way to go and to be honest I much prefer the Silverdale limestone which leads us nicely onto....

Sunday. Early start, picked up G-bob and bashed up the motorway to Fairy Steps. The predicted wall to wall sunshine had not materialised so we arrived at Aeons wall to find it dripping wet. Hmmm. Anyway lashings of toweling, chalk and brushing left enough holds sort of dry to try Aeon. Then I drew some thick chalk eyebrows on all the holds to soak up any water running down the face before it got to the holds. A few attempts working the moves then several goes later (and lots of ongoing drying) and it was job done. Just it time to as my skin, which has been in shocking condition since returnign from Font and was getting stupidly sore, finaly split. A split tip, can't remember when I last had one of those. Anyway it's a nice problem and it was satisfying to do it in very much less than ideal conditions, I'm keen to get back for Aeon Original (without the undercut), Aeon Reverse and Aeons. And I suppose Aeon Prow, but this looks nails. Anyway we cleaned off all the chalk from the face and then left for a celebratory cream tea.

After the cream tea we trudged up to Farleton. G wanted to show me New Rose, which looks hard and sharp, my skin was too sore to pull on but I'd go back to try it when (if?) my skin improves. Then we looked at a coupleof other problems, again sharp limestone coupled with sore skin meant little progress was made. Finally we went to Surfer Rosa which is a cool looking traverse line, or it would be scaled up 200%, as it is it's a bit small but still quite compelling. I gave it a few goes but to be honest I was feeling kitten weak and it felt hard. Still a nice line so I'll be back.

Back to work tonight, oh joy...