Swanage

Saturday gave (as the weather forecast had suggested) some rather murky weather, rather overcast and looking threatening, so the team paid a visit to the slightly easier venue of Cattle Troughs where Bunny's route, Hangover and Isis were shown little respect. The latter of these routes next became the setting for a classic style seacliff epic with leader unable to climb on, and belayer unable to see or hear the leader. In comes the KMC to the rescue!

On Sunday the team awoke to sea mist and general murkyness, which did not encourage adventure on seacliff's. So decamped the team headed North to Bristol and the Avon Gorge where Piton Route received some close inspection.

Just goes to show you that to rather distant venues can be visited in a summers weekend if you're willing to put a little effort in!

Needless to say that on the said same weekend there were 10 times the number of club members at the Hut as on the club meet, from which rumours have circulated that a certain Beach Boy was seen introducing another (must have been a lemming in a past life) new member to the delights of Gogarth Seacliff climbing in rough seas and high winds. The same pair were also witnessed by several (laughing and pointing wildly) members to climb on Dinas Mot, and enjoy a very long cold shower, followed by an abseil down a waterfall - needless to say the same witnesses were also patrons of Pete's Eats whilst much of the alleged soaking and abseiling took place.

Swanage, Dorset - Also known as The Beach Boys Saga!

This is the second part of my sea cliff odyssey this year it was meant to be a trilogy, but like Douglas Adams my numeracy is a little bit on the dodgy side!

Anyway, Swanage is a superb venue for a weekend's summer climbing with vast amounts of sun-kissed limestone by the sea!

So, what's there for you? Well there are routes of all grades, but to get the most out of this meet you really need to be able to climb VS (at one end of the rope anyway), as this is the starting point of the best routes. In the area there are so many quality routes that its hard to pick out some that grab the attention, at VS Freda and Old Faithful are the obvious *** routes, in the HVS range why not try Lightning Wall, Fraggle Rock, Finale Groove The Golden Fleece or perhaps the pick of the crop, Behemoth.

In the higher grades there are at least as many *** routes, Mars and Elysium stand out at E1, Gypsy and Buccaneer at E2, and Soul Sacrifice at E3.

So, where to stay? I'll be camping at Tom's Field (which does have facilities such as showers), which is near to the village of Langton Matravers, from which you can easily walk to any of the crags or most importantly, the pub! Of course if this seems all a bit to stressful there are also some superb beaches in the area which you could take advantage of (or use to soothe the ego if you find the routes a bit nasty!).

As for the weather well??. I'm picking up good vibrations; she's giving me excitations, good, good vibrations??..