Heidlburg

The Train from Zürich to Heidelberg didn't find its way to Zurich, so, instead, we caught a regional train for a couple of stations, then transferred to our “ICE” (the inter city express trains are Germany's answer to France's TGV, fast, streamlined, with a really sexy looking tapered front). The train we got was a local commuter-style train, which left us somewhat concerned about how long it would take to get to our destination... but they squeezed every bit of speed they could out of the overladen railcar, and by the time we reached the actual ICE they had waiting for us, we were only 20 minutes late, time which we easily caught up on on the high speed rails on the way into Heidelberg.

When we arrived, late in the evening, we headed to Jurgen and Manu's place, grabbed a bite to eat, and crawled off to sleep. The next morning, we slept in a little, and David showed me to the centre of town, with a little introduction to German bakeries, he then headed to the university, while I went to the laundromat. 2 hours of internet and a pile of clean laundry later, I was exploring a beautiful town, walking up toward its castle, walking along the banks of the Neckar river and taking a minute to check out the old weirs and not-quite-so-old run of river power stations under them. The day came to a brilliant end, watching the sun set from one of the bridges, where I was lucky enough to meet someone who had exactly the same idea as me, and the same camera.., she even had tried to take the same photos as me, (but of course mine looked better :P)

With various promises of rather exciting beverages such as the Varma Aple, (which translates into English as Warm Drake), I was somewhat nervous about how my evenings in Heidelberg would finish, but in the end, I only experienced some rather nice beer, and new wine.., an exciting seasonal beverage, fermented only for a short time, yeasty, slightly fizzy, and very sweet, making it very easy to drink far too much.

On the second day in Heidelberg, we got an early start, David gave me a whirlwind tour of a bit of mountain and showed me where he used to live, before he headed off to the university. I then wandered around a little more, stopping to watch a sand barge pass through the lochs at the end of town, and to take photos of a seagull looking a little confused while stranding on a piece of wood caught in one of the inlet vorticies of the power station. I then headed up the hill to check out the ruins of an old monestry, and the not-so ruined ampitheatre built for propaganda rallies during Nazi times.

Later that afternoon, I went into the KIP, (Kirchoff institute of physics), where David managed to find me a computer to spend my afternoon replying to emails, and I had a chance to meet some of his former colleagues... who all seem to hold him in high regard. with comments like “I was trying for three weeks to fix this problem, 1 hour with David and it's working.

That night we went to a pub where I tried the local specialty >>>>>>..., once again, completely saturated with cheese, (I love European food!!) and, of course, being in Germany, I had to try a couple of local beers.

My last day in town was somewhat less exciting, sitting in an internet cafe for most of the day, booking a ridiculously high priced train ticket, then joining David and the Physicists for a barbecue in the evening..... mmmm new wine...,

Switzerland in a day (and half a day's train ride)

now.., as anyone reading this is probably well aware, I'm terrible with names.., and equally terrible at getting round to doing things. I'd intended asking David to remind me of the missing names in this post, but I didn't get around to it.., by now I figure that If I don't publish this partly complete post, I'll probably never get around to it anyway.

Two of David's friends live in Switzerland, .... who did her postgrad diploma in Heidelberg with David and Simone, who was once an exchange student in NZ, and a keen member of the tramping club. The train from Rome to Zurich left at 8:30 from the main station, and crossed the border at the town of c...... the views through the snowy mountains were nothing short of spectacular, interrupted occasionally by a tunnel. (they are just in the process of digging a tunnel that will pass directly through the mountains for 10s of km, shortening the journey, but removing some of the most scenic traveling that I have ever done.
We arrived in Zurich having enjoyed a lunch of potato chips and chocolate and headed straight for ...'s place where we left our bags, and headed into town for a dinner of >>>>>>. a local speciality make of grated potato, fried and covered liberally with cheese. and of course, some local beer. Then cam a mission through town to find a beer for everyone else, and a hot chocolate for me. the beer proced easy to find, but the hot chocolate was a lttle more elusive. Eventually we found it, and not long after, we were crawling off to bed. The next day, we enjoyed a sleep in and a relaxed breakfast with .... and ...... leaving their house in time for a short walk around town

before meeting Simone at the train station at 1:30. where we decided to catch a train up >>>>> the closest mountain to town, complete with amazing mountain bike tracks (but I had no bike)) a viweing tower, amazing views across the alps and lots of other siteseers.

A refreshing walk down the hill, and various gossip with Simone about what's become of many of the old trampers, and we were at the other train station, ready to catch a train back into town, grab a hof chocolate at a cafe with cool playing card-like menus, bid farewell to Simone and head back to ...v and ...'s place for lunch/dinner before catching the train to Heidelberg at 7:30.

Rome

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”..., When we were in Rome, we did as the tourists do.

Upon arriving at the train station, and walking through the crowd of people telling us that they worked for the tourism office and could find us a hostel, down the road and into the real tourism office where we got directions to the camping ground in Ostia.

Ostia is a quiet seaside suburb of Rome, (formerly the port city serving rome) we were well out of town, at a spot that appeared as though it would be packed with drunken, sunburnt tourists during the peak months of the year, but all the resorts were empty in Autumn. The camping ground was pleasant, not too expensive, and not at all busy, unfortunately the bus from the train station only came every 45mins, so we caught it once, and made the 25min journey by foot every other time. By the time we found the camping ground, pitched the tent, and left again, it was 5:00, so we caught the train into the centre of Ostia, where we found a supermarket, bought the essentials; bread, cheese, beer, chips, and more bread, we took a brief look around town, and found that the beach was fenced off by various resorts, one of which had a small soccer field in a net. Of course, the beaches were empty, and all the locals were sitting on the pier, the closest one could get to the water without paying.

On our first full day in Rome, we went to Ostia antica (the ruins of the port town of roman empire times.) Entry to the city, (which is still an active archeology site, with ruins being exposed and preserved continually) cost about half what we would later pay to go to the ruins in the centre of Rome. The old city is fascinating, and while the buildings are smaller than those preserved in the centre of Rome, they were, mostly more intact, you could see the streets as they used to be, and know what the purpose of each building was. Of particualr note, (and engineering interest) were the baths, with underfloor heating and beautiful tiled mosaics on the floors, and the various temples and theatres.

After many hours of exploring the ruins, and almost passing out in the heat.., (whilst enjoying our lunch of potato chips) we decided that we would pass out if we stayed any longer, so we ventured into Rome. This seems to be a good moment to mention the tradition we established for our time in Italy..., one home made gelato or icecream every day. It may have been expensive, but hey.., when in Rome..., After our mid afternoon pick-me up, we went on to see a lot of the sights from the outside, get a feeling for the place, and realised that it is actually relatively small. We were getting hungry, so found a lovely restaurant, where we had a three course meal of pasta, chicken and dessert. The pasta was delicious, why does no one in NZ understand “al dente” the chicken was disappointing, being a re-constituted crumbed “fillet” but the cheesecake dessert made up for it. Shortly after we finished our meal and left the restaurant, we saw further evidence that Rome is rather small... my couchette buddies from the journey to Florence... In their somewhat inebriated state, they convinced us that we should follow them to the spanish steps, a walk that took us around the block twice and resulted in one of the girls buying a bag that she later didn't remember buying, We finally arrived at the spanish steps and found them plastered with tourists waiting to go on “the legendary spanish steps pub crawls”.., it's funny how if you call them legendary, people will go. We soaked up some of the night views of the city and agreed to meet the girls in the morning, to see the Jewish ghetto. When we met them in the morning, the girls were a little the worse for wear, so after a couple of hours of wandering around aimlessly we parted company, and headed into town to see the Colosseum, and other ancient ruins. starting with the other ancient ruins, we saw a lot of history, money and slavery sitting around us, but couldn't really get much of a feeling of what the place would have been like in its day. Unfortunately, we left after it was too late to use the other half of our ticket and go to the Colosseum. After a walk across the river, a chance to see the most streamlined island I've ever laid eyes on, and more gelato, we headed back to camp via Ostia to collect some ingredients for dinner. Which turned out to be Gnocchi with a tomato, courgette, Aubergine, and mushroom sauce, covered liberally with parmesan cheese. A little experimenting after dinner and I discovered a delicoious new way to prepare gnocchi. I'm not going to share my secrets online, but if you ask me nicely, I may just be inclined to cook it for you.

Our final day in Rome saw us head to the Vatican, where we

skippet looking at St Paul's (?) and headed for the Sistine chapel and museum. The museum was amazing, and the various small chapels we passed through on the way to the sistine were also beautifully decorated, but I was sad to say thtat the sistine chaple was a disappointment from being packed with tourists who wouldn't shut up... despite the signs banning talking, and took flash photos, despite the bans on any photography.

Rome is full of shops offering pizza, cut to length to order, delicious, and at a reasonable price, this was also true of the place we found in the vatican.

Our last meal in rome wis pizza from the camping ground, and we got up early the next day to catch our train to zurich with great expectations of cheap and tasty swiss chocolate.

Florence.

After my amazing time climbing in Spain and France, (and a great night at B's birthday party..., involving Scotch Whisky and a lot of climbers, but sadly no climbing) I headed off to meet my brother, David, in Florence, Italy.

The journey started with a short trip from Lyon to Dijon, followed by an hour of wandering around town, (the part of town that is within 1 km of the railway station anyway), buying some snacks for the 9 hour train trip I had ahead of me, and sampling the delicacies at one of the local kebab shops. Dijon appeared to be a nice city, but unfortunately I really wasn't in any position to judge it.

The train pulled in to the station, and when it stopped, a couple of American girls popped out the door for a smoke. I was in no rush to get on, so stopped for a chat, and it turned out that I'd be sharing a couchette, (or sleeping compartment) with them and another friend, along with a middle aged French couple). after much enlightening conversation, cheap French wine, and filthy humour (which I'm sure the French couple understood far more of than the girls thought they did) we eventually got to sleep, following some (admittedly deserved) comments about the odour of my feet.

We arrived in Florence over half an hour late (on time for Italian trains), I bid farewell to my couchette companions who were continuing directly on to Rome, and found David waiting patiently on the platform. I was tired after a less-than-peaceful night's sleep, and David was feeling a little sick, so neither of us had much energy. Wanting breakfast, we obviously walked into the wrong bakery, and ended up walking out with a small baguette, and 2 chocolate chip buns, 8 euro poorer. We then climbed up the hill (surprisingly steep when you're carrying 25kg on your back (David had kindly removed 6kg from my front), to the camping ground where David had already spent the previous 3 nights. A nice warm shower was a welcome relief, and we headed back into town without our packs.

Florence turned out to be a rather beautiful city, with some beautiful (and clearly expensive) churches and a lot of statues... a small taste of what was to come in Rome. After a day of siteseeing, offering the local beggars some of the bread we were eating, and being frowned at, and then trying the pasta at one of the shops in the market, we headed slowly back to the camping ground and dined on their delicious pizza before creeping off to sleep. The following morning we caught the train to Rome.

It was great to see David again, It had been over 4 months since I had las seen him, and apparently I actually missed him.

Aurac Reunion continued: Ceuse

After a long scenic sleep (oops, I mean ride) in the boot of Matthieu's car, we arrived at the camping ground in Ceuse. As I found, the camping ground is actually at the base of the hill that the crag lies atop. This would mean, much to my delight, that we'd be walking for an hour to the crag rather than driving, and I would be able to start the days feeling a little tired, rather than somewhat dizzy and nauseous. After realising this, we proceeded to drive to the nearest city, Gap, to buy groceries for the next few days, and to sample the local croissants and pain au raisin. The rock at Ceuse is sweet steep limestone..., a little like siurana was but colder, and cooler.

Now we were at a sport climbing crag, and we all felt a little more at home than we had been in the tall cliffs of Verdon. The view was still spectacular, but this time, we had panoramic views of the alps, rather than spectacular views down to the river at the bottom of Verdon Gorge. The first climb of the trip for all of us was a 6a, hoping to dip our toes into the new water gently. Both Gary and I took a little dogging to reach to top, whereas Matthieu managed it clean. over the next few days we were to try progressively harder climbs, take a few falls, and reach the climax of the trip with a dirty ascent of a 7b. At the end of our third and final day at ceuse, we managed to flash a 6b, letting ourselves think that we had actually improved a little during the course of our stay.

The camping ground was sweet, completely climber-orientated, with warm enough showers, toilets with seats and paper(a rarity in these parts) and a barn to cook in, (complete with horses, farm machinery, and a small bouldering wall for the rainy days which we were luck enough not to experience. The elevation was somewhat higher, and the temperatures were consequently lower. It was still warm enough to make the climb up walking tracks to the crag a rather sweaty experience, and to be relatively comfortable at the crag as long as the sun wasn't hiding behind clouds.

The setting of the crag is spectacular, to say the least with views through the mist across the alps, and the occasional moment when the mist would lift and show us beautiful snow-capped mountains. The climbing was moderately difficult, Gary and Matthieu went hard, and took a couple of decent falls between them, I on the other hand, was being my usual lame self, chickening out and doing too much down climbing.. with one exception, when the down climb appeared more scary than the fall.

After leaving Ceuse, we headed for Lyon (another chance to sleep in Matthieu's boot), knowing that we'd all love to return to Ceuse, but also knowing that it may only be Matthieu who will have a chance.

Aurac 2006; 2008 reunion, Verdon and Ceuse, France! part 1

Matthieu was an exchange student and former climber who visited Auckland a few years ago, and while he was around we reminded him that yes, life does revolve around climbing..., Gary and I just had to visit him to make sure he hadn't forgotten again. It turns out that Matthieu is now a dedicated climber, and has managed to find himself a lovely girlfriend who also shares his obsession with climbing..., it seems that Matthieu is another AURAC success story.

At around 6-7pm, just as it was thinking about raining, I was walking along the road looking for a campsite, when I got a call from Gary saying that he an Matthieu had arrived in Moustier, so I told them to meet me at the police station, and turned around to walk back to town. Since I had given them a difficult place to find, I was able to make it there 5 minutes before them, and direct them toward the much anticipated public toilets.

Matthieu's car is set up for carrying loads of construction materials, and tools, rather than back seat passengers, so the ride out of Moustier saw us driving past a police station with Gary and me cosily sharing one seat. After the first night's camping, (a welcome rest, and a nice hot meal, thanks to some generous campers who actually had the correct type of gas bottle for our cooker), we headed out to sample our first taste of Verdon climbing. We passed through the town of ........ where we picked up the essentials for lunch; 2 baguettes, some cheese and some ham. along with chocolate, snacks, and a couple of bottles of water. We then realised that we had just missed the Vertigo climbing festival in Verdon. It may have been an amazing time, but we were thankfull to have plenty of space on the cliffs without other people getting annoyed at how terribly slowly we were climbing.

On the way to the crag, we stopped to ask for a little advice, this was a mistake, we had previously chosen an interesting route to start on, but had another recommended to us, little did we know that we would spend hours searching for the top of the route, and eventually abandon any hope of finding it in favor of climbing a single 50m pitch, with a 50m and a 70m rope. This would turn out to be a lead climb that Matthieu will never forget, swearing and screaming for slack while we told him he couldn't have any, and becoming a great source of amusement for the climbers on neighboring routes. The climb was scenic, in fact, beautiful, and quite an experience. That day, we had woken relatively early, in the hopes of getting plenty of climbing done, I didn't start my ascent until after 5:00pm. We learnt a lot that day, the value of good rope management, the difficulties one can face approaching routes from the top, and most importantly, how vital it is to carry you lunch with you, even if you're only climbing a short route that will be finished well before lunchtime.

That night, we went to a new campsite, and entertained the owner firstly when I appeared out from the boot of the car, and again when Gary had to unroll the tent to find his wallet. We enjoyed another welcome meal and sleep, waking late the next morning and heading for a somewhat easier to find route, Learning from previous experiences, we ate lunch before starting the climb, and only carried a (surprisingly heavy) bag with water, shoes for Gary and Matthieu, and warm clothes. That day ended happily, lotsa photos later, and thankfully, the large teetering block of rock in the carpark did not fall and crush someone's car.

That night, we were made aware of the climbers' camping ground, so our last night (and the only rainy evening) was spent at a camping ground decently equipped with a cooking shelter, and, normal toilets (we were getting somewhat sick of squatting to do our business) We were thinking of leaving the next morning, but thankfully we were convinced to have a go at a properly long route before driving to Ceuse. We started the day at a reasonable hour, drove to some of the most impressive, easily accessible cliffs I've ever seen. This time, we decided to risk leaving lunch until after the climb, a risk that paid off in the end. but we were still sure to carry some heavy water and some snacks. A long series of 4 abseils was followed by 100m and 5 sweet pitches of relatively easy climbing, (although a pack on your back, or a pair of full ropes does weigh you down somewhat, making the seemingly easy grade of 6a seem a little more challenging than it should have.

Easy pitches, with 15m runouts, heavy ropes, long days, and the discovery that “if It's run out, that means it must be easy” summaries a wonderful time at Verdon,, and Ceuse can wait for the next train trip.

Moustier

I only spent half a day in Moustier, but it was such a beautiful little village, (and I took so many photos) that I figure it deserves its own post.

Moustier is an old village, possibly as close as the bus will take you to the Verdon gorge, (or perhaps, the nice people in the visitor information places misled me... The village is pearched on the side of some pretty steep and impressive rock, with a stream flowing out of the mountains and through its middle.

I arrived at the bus stop, and the bus driver kindly pointed me up the hill toward the village. I l wandered up there, and the first thing i saw was hundreds of middle aged tourists... once I had fought my way through them, found the all-important boulangerie (eventually I saw a man carrying a baguette and harassed him until he told me where he he'd bought it) and then the information centre, where the Lady was kind enough to let me leave my large pack, gave me a map, and recommended some tracks for me to walk around. I started out on the 3 hour loop, (which would have taken me about 1 hour if i hadn't stopped for a couple of hours in a chapel half way up the hill, and then continued walking up the valley where none of the other tourists seemed capable of venturing.

When I reached the top of the hill, I had time to eat some bread and ponder a little.., after some pondering, I decided that i should actually look at the map I had been given, and quickly realised that I was no longer on it... I did, however, read a little local history, the story behind the star hanging over the valley, above the chapel. While imprisoned in some far away country during a war, one of the villagers swore that if he ever returned to the village, he would hang a star above it. Since the day that he returned, there has always been a star hanging there. every 50 years or so, the chain rusts, and a new star is erected, varying in size from 60cm to 1.5m. (I'd hate to be under the star or chain when it rusts through.)

I had been going to meet Matthieu and Gary at around midday, but as was the way for this trip, they didn't end up arriving until after 6pm. I enjoyed some much-needed “alone time” that day, and really didn't mind the delay.

Fly-by tour of Montpellier, Avignon, and Marseille

another "pics to come later" episode..., sorry...

After leaving Siurana, Katie had a couple of days to absorb as much French culture as possible while still making it to the airport on time. I had a few days to kill before meeting Matthieu and Gary. We started our French experience by arriving in Montpelier at 11:00pm, and finding a lot of hotels with “Complet” hanging in their windown. The city was beautiful, felt pretty safe and was still alive and exciting, with people kicking a ball around in the city square. Eventually, we walked into a hotel displaying a complet sign and the nice man phoned around until he found us a somewhat small and expensive hotel room, about half an hour's walk away but we were happy to eventually have a roof over our heads. We figured that we had the next day to do a little exploring before heading for Lyon, but then we missed the last train to Lyon, and there were no vacancies at all in Montpelier that night, so we went to nearby Avignon where we arrived in the rain, spent the night in a big, but fairly grotty IBIS hotel room, and paid through the nose for the privilege. The next morning saw us working out how we were to get on to our next destinations, and left us about one hour for exploring..., really not enough time to do anything.

Last night, I had a comfortable bed in a friendly hostel in Marseille, and now I'm on a coach to Moustier, a small village in Verdon The driver's playing Bob Marley and we're speeding along the motorway through the fog.

Montpelier seemed like a pretty cool town, with nice friendly people and at least one really good bakery (we must have spent at leat 15 euro there, and extended our waist lines no end. I can see why Amy would live there. Avignon was cool, but the only area we saw was inhabited by what appeared to be over-monied teenagers/uni students.(but the wall looked cool! Marseille is a big city, and I only saw a very small part of it. no one in the train station seemed to spenk English when i arrived, and the information centre is a 20minute walk (or 40 minute metro ride if you include waiting for the train to arrive), from the station, down by the port, where lots of people have rather a lot of money tied up next to the wharves.

Now I'm going to be jammin, and trying to snooze a little before I reach my destination.

Siurana

Once again, keep posted, pics will come sometime soon..., sorry guys

Oh, and sorry I've been pretty slack on the posting lately, I've been travelling round here and there with lots of people and haven't had time to do much interwebbing

It was with great sadness that I watched the sun set over the Pyrenees on the train ride from Barcelona to Montpelier The scene was truly beautiful, but the windows of the train were filthy.... I was only in Spain for a short time, and the time in Siurana passed far too quickly. I had just started to get to know the place, found the swimming hole, and spent one day climbing some reasonably hard routes when it was time to leave.

When we told people that we were leaving Monserrat, they said we had to go to Siurana... they were right!. I had read that it wasn't worth going if we didn't have a car, but that was completely untrue. After leaving Monserrat, we caught the train to Barcelona, spent too much time online, then caught the train to Tarragona. a relatively small coastal town, quite beautiful. where we ended up in a hotel... expensive, but not too bad, and a worthwhile stop. the next morning, we caught the bus to Reus, and since it was the public holliday in which the Catalyn people celebrate loosing the war with spain (or so we were told by Toni at Siurana) most of the shops were closed, and we missed catching any bus to cornidelia (the village at the base of the mountains which are home to siurana), so, facing the possibility of spending too much money on accomodation in a not especially exciting city, we caught a taxi to Siurana. upon arriving at the camping ground, we met the owners, a retired couple who had been persuaded to open the campsite by their son, Toni, who was pretty much resposible for making siurana what it is today. 20 years ago, Siurana was an almost dead village, now, it is a climbing, and siteseeing destination with over 20 full time residents. After checking in, we wandered down the road to the village of siurana, had a bite to eat, and returned to the camp with a five minute walk along a ridgeline through an impressive electrical storm. The rain wasn't heavy, but the lightning and thunder was loud and close. Once we got back to the camp, we went to the bar for a drink, and spent the next hour talking to Toni, while climbing videos played on the Screen. The bar was packed with climbers since Thursday was a holiday... and i guess a lot of people were sick on Friday....

The next day, Katie and I walked for a couple of hours down to Cornedila to buy some groceries whlie quiviok hung around at camp. Cornedellia was a quaint little village, with a few shops which all seemed to sell the same items. We left the village with a 5 euro 2Lplastic bottle of wine a 7 euro glass bottle, the biggest loaf of bread I had ever seen, and a variety of other groceries, including 1L of olive oil, and a litre of vinegar.., fortunately, it wasn't hard to hitch a ride up the hill, and soon Toni was giving us a lift back to camp. In the afternoon, we sampled Paella.., a Spanish Risotto filled with seafood, and finished the day vowing to climb the following one.

The Rock in Siurana is lovely limestone. very different to the conglomerate in Monserrat, but not generally quite as juggy as the stuff in Paynes Ford and Mangaokewa. The holds are mostly small.., (with the occasional huge pocket), the routes are steep, with some amazing underclilngs and reaches up to mantle ledges. We only climbed at 3 crags (of over 10) in the area. My first climb there was 6c, (I'm not so good at reading sketches copied out of guide books, so it took us a couple of hours gto find the crag (20 mins away from camp) and was hoping to start out on a 5.., so a little dogging later, and I was up the top of a climb that neither Katie or Quiviok had a hope of completing. but I had an introduction to the rock, and loved it. Later we found our way to another crag (where we caught up with a nice guy who we'd met at Monserrat who had agreed to drop Quiviok in Reus), I had some fun on a couple of routes there, a 6a which Katie seconded, and a 6c+ which i did half of before returning to the anchors of the 6a..., a very fun climb which I would greatly enjoy completing (but sadly, I couldn't as we were running to catch a lift back to camp.

Climbing on the wall next to the Siurana village carpark was sunny, long, hard, and best of all, pumpy!!, We climbed there with Andy and Yasmine, a couple of Austrian medschool grads who were kind enough to leave top ropes on a couple of 7b/c routes for me, and met 3 english climbers, (one of them claimed to be German, but she wasn't fooling anybody). Half way through the day and half a dozen routes after arriving, we left the crag, in search of food, water and shade. We found all of these at camp, and then departed once again, this time in search of the swimming hole, which we eventually found, and enjoyed..., but by the time we had finished there, we no longer had any time for climbing.

Our final day of climbing was back at the first crag we had visited, trying a few other fun routes, but sadly, I didn't get a chance to make another attempt on the route i had dogged up on the first day. That afternoon, we spent too much time on the internet trying to work out how we were going to get out of Siurana, finding that the only bus from Cornedelia leaves at 7:30am, and deciding that we'd have to try to hitch our way to Reus, the next day.

Luckily, not long after packing up in the morning, we discovered that the owners of the camping ground were driving to Reus, and could offer us a lift there, true climbing hospitality!

The whole experience of Siurana was amazing, Camping was brilliant with a wonderfully friendly climbing atmosphere, from our first night in a chalet, the 2nd night in a caravan, and subsequent nights after Quiviok left, in a tent. The number of English speaking climbers left you never having to battle to be understood, my only complaint would be about the ferral cats who ate a hole into the tent and stole a salami and some delicious cheese.

I hope that one day I will be able to return to Siurana, and climb some of the thousand routes that I didn't, but even if that does not happen, I'm still thankful that I was able to experience what I did.