A Kalymnian Omelette

Yet again it has been a while since I found myself on here. Its not that I don't want to write about the stuff I get up to but it seems to be even less common nowadays that I find myself with a moment to think let alone compose some thoughts. A wet bank holiday Monday seems to be a good place to get on the wagon again.

Last week I returned from Kalymnos and a 3 week trip. Kalymnos is a regular destination for me and I absolutely love it. There are always new people to meet, friends to make and obviously new areas to explore. The highlights of this years trip in no particular order were ET Cave (thanks Neil), St Photis (thanks Simon), watching the kneebar talents of Emilie from Canada, on sighting the amazing extension to Cigarillo-possibly the best 55m route in the Grande Grotte area, coaching another very psyched group with Adrian Berry from www.positiveclimbing.com and having dinner at Pirates Bay.

Our workshop dates for 2015

To be honest though out of all that fun there were two things that stood out more than anything. A Kalymnian Omelette with added bacon from Sakis and bolting a new and very easy multi pitch route starting from the left side of Stankill and heading leftwards on some obvious ramplines into Panorama Left and making its way to the top of the crag in six pitches 3, 4b, 4b, 5b, 4b, 5b. The route is called Skywalk and will hopefully be a popular addition.

This one certainly won't be a soft touch ;-) Last years project.

Bolted ground up this years addition is a little bit easier than my project from last year. A 4pitch mega project above afternoon on which I managed to free the easiest of the 3 new pitches, the last one at a rather technical and pockety 8a. Sadly this year a couple of the small and delicate tufas remained wet so I will have to wait until next October to try again.

For the last 4 weeks I and probably a large and ever growing number of climbers in the UK have followed Shauna Coxsey and her quest for the IFSC Boulder World Cup title. With two golds out of 4 events and always on the podium the half way break gives everyone a well earned rest and an opportunity to train a little rather than just travel. Shauna will be back on our screens from Toronto this weekend. The tour then moves to Vail, a quick jaunt back to China and finally onto the last round in Laval France to finish off a mega busy and fast paced season. By the 29th of June no matter what happens it will certainly have been the most exciting series of competition I have witnessed since I saw first hand Mark Croxall win at Birmingham and Andrew Earl win in La Reunion. Bring on a World Champion summer for Team GB and a big thanks to all those that stood up at a time when we lost our funding to contribute to the peoples team.

My rest days at the moment are taken up in supporting Kate and our ponies in the quest to have 4 FEI (The Federation Equestre Internationale) qualified ponies by the end of this season. No mean feat when many people, even the top riders are pleased to have one or two that can stay sound all year and even more impressive when you consider that all ours are barefoot i.e. no horse shoes.



The life of  "The Crew" is not so easy!