I have just got back from an excellent three days climbing in the Wye Valley. As I effectively finished my degree on Thursday I headed home for the weekend, on Friday I met up with one of my school friends and headed over to Wintour’s Leap which is a fantastic crag 10mins from Chepstow. To start with we climbed the classic Hard Severe of the Wye Valley called Zelda. This was a fantastic climb which contained a bit of everything including some bold and exposed moves on fantastic rock. After we had completed that climb we headed back down but this time over to Fly wall which contains shorter climbs and climbed another classic route of the crag, Freedom, which was graded at Very Severe. It was another great climb which involved some crack climbing techniques which I don’t have much experience at before a very bold traverse right before the final few moves which certainly got the adrenalin flowing. On Saturday I headed further up the Wye Valley to Symonds Yat with Mum where we spent the afternoon climbing four routes there. I warmed up on Golden Fleece with. Read the full article…

With the largest piece of coursework of my degree due in within two weeks I am of course heavily procrastinating at the moment, with the beautiful weather on Sunday I was desperate to get out on some rock to make the most of it before it got cold and wet again this week but no one in Exeter wanted to play. So I drove up to the Symonds Yat in the Wye Valley picking Simon up from Chepstow on the way to introduce another one of my friends to outdoor climbing. This meant going back to VDiff again to determine what Simon could climb so we climbed the classic VDiff of the crag, Snoozin’ Suzie, which was fantastic and a great introduction for Simon into outdoor climbing. Climbing up out of the woods and being presented with a view of the Wye Valley was just fantastic! After this we headed over to the other side of the crag to climb up a big pinnacle, up the opposite side to us is a classic VS which is on my to do list but that can wait for another day. We headed up a. Read the full article…

Making the most of the fantastic weather at the end of March I headed over to Dartmoor on two separate occasions with Stephen and Rosie for a few days climbing. Firstly I headed to Haytor with Stephen where we climbed Honeymoon Corner (Severe), Levitation (VS 4b) which meant I learnt what bold climbing was and found it slightly scary due to there being no gear placements! Before finishing on Raven Gully (S 4a) and heading home for steak and ice cream! On Friday I headed back to Dartmoor but this time to Hound Tor with Rosie. It was her first time climbing outdoors so we started off on a nice VDiff and then progressed onto a few HVDs which were great. Mixed in with these I lead my first VS 4c called Suspension Flake which was absolutely fantastic. After we had done lots of climbing at Hound Tor we headed over to Haytor so Rosie could have a go at a Severe called Raven Gully and despite having lead it twice before I somehow managed to take a fall on it, which was also my first fall while trad climbing!

Over the past few weeks there has been some fantastic weather so I have taken a few days off university and headed out to Dartmoor for some trad climbing in the sun. Trad climbing is a very new sport for me so I am currently learning all the basics of placing my own gear on easy routes though they are still really great climbs. Sitting on a belay as the sun is setting and you are belaying your partner up the rock is just fantastic. Unsurprisingly my camera comes climbing with me as always and these photos are taken by a mixture of being sat at the top looking down or by hanging on an abseil rope to get into a position half way up the climb, there are even some photos of me leading my first trad routes as I gave my camera to a friend.