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.

goodbye edinburgh

I'll try to upload some pics to go with this soon...,

also, keep an eye out for my adventures in the isle of mull..., (I lost the post i'd written a couple of weeks ago.)

I arrived in Edinburgh expecting to spend a week or 2, and left 6 weeks later. The hospitality i received from Reg and his flatemates, Annalise, Julia and Patrick was wonderful, and the community of Destiny Church Edinburgh were simply amazing.

Normally I would go into a place, and come out thrilled about the scenery, rocks, and other things, with a whole heap of spectacular photos to prove my point. Edinburgh has some nice old buildings, a few rocks here and there, and i went on a couple of outings a little further north to see some pretty exciting countryside, and had some days of beautiful clear skies and lying round in the park but much of the time, it was raining, and i didn't take many photos of exciting places... Yet, my time in Edinburgh has touched me more than i had ever imagined it would.

When i arrived, Annalise mentioned that Destiny were fitting out a new building in a suburb called Gorgie, having reached capacity in their existing building in leith, (with most seats full at 3 services every Sunday) So, I figured that it could be fun to go there for a couple of days and help out with construction. (I figured i'd spend a day or 2 there, and perhaps volunteer at the Edinburgh bicycle...., a very cool charity set up with the intention of providing bikes to people who couldn't otherwise afford them. Unfortunately, i never made it there... On my first day at Gorgie I met a few cool people who made me want to return..., so, on the next rainy day, i was back. I figured i'd spend about another week in Edinburgh, siteseeing on fine days, and building on rainy ones..., It seems that I was meant to be building, Edinburgh has just been through one of the wettest summers anyone can remember!

I assumed that helping at Gorgie would leave me feeling warm fuzzies when i left, but i didn't expect to meet such earnest, people, or to be spiritually challenged to the extent that i was.

I don't have room to mention everyone who I'm going to deeply miss, and i wish i'd managed to get a lot more photos of people while i was there, but that shouldn't matter, as when i was saying goodbye yesterday, everyone seemed convinced that I'll be back sometime soon, and they could well be right. After all, I've done hand stands, head stands and cartwheels in plenty of church buildings in my time, but last Sunday was the first time i've ever done a head stand in the middle of the sermon.., (and possibly the longest one i've ever done too, I was pretty close to passing out by the time i'd finished. Sunday was lovely way to finish my time in Edinburgh, hanging out with cool people all day long, eating baked potatoes, going to a cool little galery...and the fact that they went out of their way to put on such an amazing fireworks display, just for me, was incredible!

Edinburgh

Sorry for the long gap since my last post, I've been busy, sociable, and otherwise not blogging. i got half way through a post a while ago, and have just picked it up some time later... (also, I'll try to get some photos on this post tomorrow.., as it's time for bed now)

After a nice relaxing train ride from Birmingham (did I mention it only cost 4 quid) I arrived at Waverly station (after changing trains on the way because the one i was on was running late... surprise surprise), After wandering around the train station and finding the right exit, I walked up the the stairs and heard the sound of bagpipes resonating down the street.On the way down the street, I passed the busker, and heard another one a couple of hundred metres down the road. After the forth bagpiper and a belly dancer, I got to the end of the road, turned left and walked down to find Reg's apartment and met his flatmate, Annalise.

The buildings in Edinburgh have been well made, and since there don't appear to be many earthquakes in this part of the world, there are a lot of relatively old buildings. Reg's is no exception, stairs have worn somewhat, and the front profile of the steps is a rather smiley shape, sloping making it somewhat odd climbing the stairs with a heavy pack.

Since then,I've been wandered around town a bit, (I found that what appeared to be the high density centre of the city actually goes on forever, until the city runs out and you're in the countryside.) From an urban design point of view, this city's wonderful.., you can ride pretty much anywhere in town in 10 minutes, or walk it in 30. Buses seem to work, and the best part is they've managed to achieve this without everyone living in a shoebox. The city may have formed the way it has purely as a result of the cold climate, (and people's unwillingness to travel long distances to visit friends, or the pub) along with the fact that people didn't have cars when the city was established.

On my second day here, I discovered the art gallery and museum, and that evening, Reg took me to the local bouldering crag. quite a nice spot, one I've visited a couple of times since.

About an hour's train journey out of Edinburgh, there's a small coastal town called North Berwick, home of a Puffin colony, and various other excitement, none of which were a priority while i was there. The reason I went was to climb. On North Berwick Law, the only hill in the area, there is an abandoned quarry, with a few routes on it. The easy routes were easy, and the medium routes were fun. The routes I should have been able to do were too hard, and the hard routes looked very cool. Unfortunately, when Reg and I arrived, there was already a small crowd there, around 10 people (which may not sound like many, but when there are only 8 climbs there it makes for slightly crowded climbing and a little waiting for climbs).... then after we started climbing, a few more people showed up, and in the end, it was getting late and i didn't have time to climb the route I particularly wanted to.. one short attempt and failure before we realised we had missed the train left me a little unfulfilled.., (on the plus side, at least we managed to get a lift back with some of the friendly climbing crowd.) A short drive out of town, is Ratho, a small town, with a big wall, In fact the highest indoor climbing wall I've ever seen, 40m in parts. Most of the lead wall leaves you wondering where all that rope went when you reach the ground. (the shortest climbs are about 23m)

I've managed to get out of town a couple of times, once was a trip most of the way to the highlands, but not quite there... for burgers, which, while rather pleasant, weren't anything out of the ordinary.. of course, the location, and scenery were something amazing.

On my first Sunday here, I ended up at Destiny church, (the Edinburgh one, not to be confused with destiny NZ, or any other church by the same name) I met a handfull of interesting people, and discovered that they're in the process of fitting out a new building as a church... so the next day i went along and have spent a fair bit of time there since, hanging Gib board,framing up walls, moving chairs around,

Last Monday was Reg's birthday, so he, Maeghan and I went on a road trip to the isle of Mull.., a little way north, and a long way west. but that can wait for the next exciting and beautiful blog post.., (for those of you who are interested, the photos are already up on facebook)