Yesterday morning, I managed to not set my alarm for 8am, so was woken at 9am, by llion, who was keen for some climbing. So we headed straight out, me fuelled by a single small bowl of museli and more importantly no coffee. As we approached Llion mentioned that he hadn’t been there since a good friend of ours developed a certain nickname.
It was Llion’s first trip up from aberyswyth, where he was at Uni, with a young Matt Perrier. After living in a cave for the weekend, Matt has forever been known to us all as Ug, so for all his friends who may have thought that the name came from the fact that matt simply is a walking muscle, can rest assured that it was in part due to a cave dwelling weekend.
As I climbed the first route, and half way, having a hard time and obviously not enjoying myself, I have a hate-hate relationship with Limestone. I turn down to Llion, and simply ask with a wry smile. ‘Hey Llion, you eveer wonder why you haven’t been back since the mid 1990’s?
Anyway, as we ticked some more routes we actually managed to find some that were nice, including The Man with the Inidian Rubber Head, The Udder Head, all F6a. We then did the F6b which was called something like Radalrwin, which was an excellent route, and one of the best easy routes there.
I then remembered that there was a F6a in the back of the main cave, that climbs rather atmospheric terrain, up out of what was essentialy a blow hole type feature. It was a good and unconventional F6a, and to be honest rather soft. When there I saw Adolescent Stimuli, a F6b or F6a+ dependent on what guide.
That route was totally different from a lot of North Wales Limestone, as it was mainly based on tufa climbing, a rare event hereabouts, it would be worth 3 stars if it was a little longer, but it is a class route.
After that we climbed a few routes on the left side of the crag. Good day considering I was climbing badly, and half asleep for most of the day!