I have just returned from the Avon Mountaineering Club’s annual September trip to Cornwall, we were staying in the fantastically located Count House which is located right next to Bosigran. It felt more like mid summer than mid autumn during the trip thanks to warm weather, blue skies and plenty of sun. On the first day I headed down to Bosigran with Rich with the aim of climbing Bow Wall and Suicide Wall. I had been debating Bow Wall all week as it is a super classic E2, however it has a reputation for being hard, speaking to my mum earlier in the week she informed me that “I don’t remember it being too hard, you will be fine”. From the bottom the line looks pretty intimidating and I jumped on the route as the first route of the day, before I could get cold feet. The start of the first pitch was easy but pretty bold climbing, but thankfully the gear improved as the climbing got harder. I was soon at the first crux, a steep crack up to the base of a large overhang, after arranging gear I was. Read the full article…

After visiting Lundy for the first time last year I have been looking forward to heading back to the island this year. Since getting back from the alps the excitement had really been building as I got back to full climbing fitness and started reading the guidebook and creating a very long and ambitious ticklist. As my last few days at work dragged on I found myself spending more and more time looking at the forecast charts and getting over excited as it looked like a stable period of high pressure was building, and this weather didn’t disappoint as we had 4 days of sunshine! We had a very successful trip where over the course of 4 days we climbed 14 routes with 26 pitches, 32 stars and which totalled 714m of vertical climbing. The highlights of the trip for me were: Quatermass – A committing 3 pitch E2 with fantastic sustained climbing Redspeed – One of the best pitches of climbing I have ever done Devils Slide – Onsight solo with a serious amount of exposure at the top Day 0 We drove down to North Devon on the Friday evening. Read the full article…

Armed with a positive forecast I made the decision to head down to South Devon for 2 days with Tom over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon we headed down to Berry Head where we climbed the classic HVS Moonraker before heading to the Dewerstone on Sunday to climb the classic Central Groove and Gideon. Moonraker is described as “One of the UK’s greatest HVSs” which is quite a statement and was always going to be hard to live up to, it is also a bit of an adventure as to approach the base of the route you have to solo a low tide traverse, which is graded around Severe. This traverse makes the route seem far more committing, as you either have to climb the route or swim out… The route was fantastic with P1 and P3 being the highlight, P1 was very steep and sustained with some fantastic exposure and P3 was an outrageously steep but amenable corner, looking down was very exciting at this point! While we were climbing we had a number of highs thanks to the fantastic climbing and wildlife keeping us company, however we did. Read the full article…