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.