Day Trip report

by Matt Everett

Despite a forecast of showers, we woke up to a promising morning of clear skies and sunshine. After Joe and Neil turned up a bit hungover we set off to Pobbles.

In classic learn to lead style, we arrived at the crag too early, and the tide was in. This was carefully planned to allow practice in gear placements before the window of opportunity opened allowing us to start climbing.

Ed had also turned up to make good use of the weather along with Matt R and Neil. They all climbed various routes at Pobbles and Three Cliffs throughout the day while the university of trad climbing taught. Leah, Jack, Liam and Alex were the students for the day, and myself and Joe were the teachers. The students passed their first task of placing good gear placements in the beach level walls just behind pobbles. A quick demonstration of building a belay, and we were all off around the corner to start leading.

Joe took Alex and Jack while I coached Leah and Liam (because Joes hangover prevented him from distinguishing similar sounding words). Leah went climbed first placing 3 excellent pieces of gear, capable of holding an erratic elephant from falling. Alex similarly topped out and created a well equalised belay, textbook style.

With the weather holding we all ventured round to Three Cliffs area and found the majority of routes to be dry. The exception being Scavenger (VS 4c) which was Neil’s obvious choice.

Liam now stepped up to lead Joggled Wall (VDiff) and Jack did Left Corner I (Diff). Again more great gear was placed and belays were well formed and bomber.

But then…

As Leah topped out, the air temperature suddenly dropped. Clouds were closing in and a sheet of heavy rain blocked visibility of the other side of the bay! We were about to get drenched. Luckily we were all on the top of our routes and headed down as fast as possible amidst rain and hail. Jess first had to tame a wild rope flailing wildly in the wind as she tried to coil it, while Joe and his students sprinted past us all and hid near Under Milk Wood (VS 4a).

By the time we got down, the rain had stopped (obviously) and the sun was out again (obviously) but the crag and climbers were soaked. We decided to pack up and head home to pub on the pond, where hilarity and good table manners ensued.