It's amazing how quickly time flies when having fun... That is as the saying goes but it's not entirely been true this trip. Time has flown by for me but I haven't been enjoying myself as much as I should have been. It's a common theme when pushing your own personal boundaries, when you're not going well, having fun seems to be a lot harder. What a stupid way to be though right? Why should having fun correlate directly with performing your best at the activity you are doing? It shouldn't realistically, I tell this to all the kids I coach... Continue reading

So we have just had days 3 and 4 of climbing in the mega steep, mega drilled limestone sports crag of Gorges du Loup (Gorges of the Wolf). After days 1 and 2 of climbing here I thought perhaps it was just me, tired after a long drive south and experiencing a bit of travelers exhaustion. Now having climbed after a rest day, I am more convinced that the style here has more to do with the difficulties I am experiencing.   Climbing at Deverse sector in Gorges du Loup is a lot like climbing on a hard competition style route... Continue reading

I am currently lying on our air bed enjoying the last few hours of the evening sun before we cook dinner. This has been our first week of travelling and climbing in France. Time has passed so quickly that it's hard to believe we have been out for that long. It certainly doesn't feel like we have done that much, but driving and general moving around has eaten up a lot of our climbing time. However, we have still been having fun living the dream in Alex's big orange van - swimming in rivers, visiting  pretty villages and pulling hard on... Continue reading

So we've been in France now for almost a week but haven't actually done much climbing as of yet :/ Me and Nat drove to France with Alex Barrows in his awesome orange van with the aim of first heading to La Balme, a popular locals crag 5 hours from Nice and from there we would then head to Gorge du Loup, an even better locals crag with some steep and  hard lines to get stuck into. Alex high on a 7c at La Balme On first arriving at La Balme we found it to be insanely hot and humid. We... Continue reading

Last weekend we made yet another trip down to that old haunt of ours - The Yorkshire Dales! It gave us a strange sensation of "déjà-vu" as me, Robbie and Will Carroll drove down on the Friday evening. Almost one year ago we had climbed and camped together surrounded by the stunningly beautiful landscape of the Dales. Our aim for this year's trip? To spend 3 days focussing our efforts on completing some new and exciting routes whilst avoiding rain and midges. Unfortunately, it is near impossible to avoid midges at this time of year in the UK, yet on every other... Continue reading