It's A dog's Life

Yesterday I went out to Cow's Mouth Quarry, a local-ish venue, with a view to trying Daytona Wall and Daytona Wall Direct. Last year I did Boldness Through Ignorance which is on the same buttress and had seen that the other routes looked good so I had harboured ideas of a return visit. I turned up and visually the lines looked dry and clean, there was a bit of dampness in the depths of some low down cracks and breaks but that was easily avoided and the higher face appeared dry. The original route Daytona Wall takes a rising traverse line, starting on the far left and topping out to the right. There is also a direct start, and a direct finish. Daytona Wall gets E5, the Direct Start and Direct Finish are also both E5.
I decided to try the Directs first. The direct start is actually pretty straight-forward, maybe slightly harder than the original start but not a lot in it. The middle bit (which is common to all three lines) was surprisingly technical but a delightful move once I hit the right sequence. Then it's a couple of long but easy reaches to find yourself a move or two below the top at a couple of holds in a thin break. At this point Daytona Wall head off right to an obvious and easy finish. I was keen for the direct finish though. It all seemed pretty obvious, reach up with the right to a slightly gaston-y hold, high left foot in the break, rock-on and reach the top. I went for the gaston-y hold with my right hand and felt very stretched out, too stretched out?? I tried to get my foot up to the break but (as a short inflexible old man) I could only just get my toe up to the edge of the foothold, I tried to waggle it further onto the hold, and a bit of the part I was stood on crumbled under my foot, hmmm... A couple more waggles and the foots on, phew. But now I can't move up, the foot is too high and is fouling on my left arm so I can't get any weight onto it. This is getting a bit tense now. Right move my left arm, put my left hand back on the same hold but this time with my arm under my leg. Right now I can move, get weight onto the foot and up to the top, sheesh. The dog stops crying.
Back down to the bottom, give the dog a fuss, then off up the original line. This goes easily, it just flows really nicely and is over very quickly and with no fuss, although having done the direct start and finsh and Boldness Through Ignorance I've done the vast majority of the climbing before so it's hardly on-sight.
I think Daytona Wall is an excellent quarried grit E5, I also think combining the directs as a solo is well worth E6, that top move felt hard to me. However I have a sneaking suspicion that it may (only may, I certainly couldn't say for sure) be possible to arrange some gear in the top break before the final hard move, which would probably get it back down to E5.
I'm really feeling keen for some trad this season.