Pembroke: The Mark squared meet!

Present: Rick Davies, Mark Galligan, Mark Binham

With a rather mixed weather report and little coaxing I managed to talk two willing victims into making the journey down to South Wales. As weather reports were rather mixed, and I quite like travelling to venues early in the morning, we decided that a dawn raid was in order, so the team hit the crags at about 11.00am.

On the Saturday we arrived to wall to wall sunshine and quickly had to change into shorts and vests to fit in with our new climate, owing to a rather naff high tide time we decided that the best course of action would be to visit Stennis head and partake in some of the delights on offer their. So whilst frying in the sunshine Mark G. made an ascent of Limbo (VS 4c), Mark B. then took up the gauntlet and fired himself up Cool for cats (E1 5b) followed by ascents of C++ (HVS 5a) and Hercules (HVS 5a) by myself. Perhaps it was the exciting "proper" sea cliff climb nature of the former of these but both energy and enthusiasm from the rest of the team seemed to have vanished by this stage, and after a short sunbathe it was agreed (as nobody else wanted to climb!) that the team should retire to the comfort of the St. Govan's arms back in Bosherston.

We awoke on Sunday morning rather fuzzy headedly to an unwelcome sound, rain coming down hard on the outside of the tent, fortunately it was only early so an hour or sos dozing soon saw it pass. By breakfast the sky's still hadn't cleared, although as ever I was eager to climb and felt that we could at least sneak one or two routes in! Driven on (perhaps maddeningly) by my inextinguishable enthusiasm we made the short walk to St. Govan's where Mark G. decided that the sunburn he had received the previous day was far to painful for him to climb, leaving myself and Mark B. left to climb. At this we made the ab. in and I took on Army Dreamers (HVS 5a), during which a rather heavy shower decided to pay a visit to make things a little more interesting! Following a short break and a warm at Ye Olde Worlde Tea Room both my self and Mark B. were fired on by the sight of a patch of blue sky, so we ventured down into St. Govan's again were Mark lead Front line (HVS 5a) and The loosener (HVS 5a) before the threat of more rain sent us on our way home.

All in all a good weekend so where were you all? Come on KMC ers, isn't it time that you got out of the boring rut of "oh well the forecast isn't brilliant so I'll just go to the peak district" - live a little, the weather is rarely as bad as those pessimistic weather men on our TV's make it out to be.

Owing to some pretty strict bird restrictions along much of Devon's Sea cliffs I have opted for some of the slightly better known sea cliffs of South Wales. All those who had been looking forward to some hardcore Devon cream teas and sea cliff adventures fear not though, as I have every intention of running the meet at a later point in the year during 2004.

Assuming I can prise my guidebook back from the sweaty paws of a certain young bendcrete employee (and that there's no bird bans) then the meet will take place in true South Wales - on some truly terrifying sea cliffs! If I am once again hit by bird bans then we will wander into South West Wales. But don't panic - abseil approaches and empty crags will be 'de rigour' for this meet (as with most of my meets).

So as promised, no bank holiday traffic to get stuck in, crowd free crags and the rock will be bathed in glorious sunshine - so need any more reasons to be on the next southern sea cliffs meet?