With a poor forecast we abandon plans for climbing in the Lakes and decided to stay closer to home. The weather for Saturday was supposed to be horrendous - so why not enter the Tal-y-Fan fell race - a gruelling 8 mile course starting and finishing in Rowen. I like running in the rain - but not in 20 degrees heat. The rain held off but the sweat didn't and I really had to push myself hard to get round in 1hr 28... pleased with this time as it was probably my first run for a couple of months.
On Sunday Jen and myself headed down to the LLyn Peninsula - where the sun always shines. For those of you who have never climbed in this quiet backwater (and I suspect that is most of you) you really should make the effort - especially when it is wet in the mountains. The climbing down this way does however require a certain amount of steadiness, commitment, an ability to deal with loose rock and maybe some form of mental derangement... but you will be well rewarded.
We headed to Craig Doris - which has a reputation for being extremely loose and scary. Walking down to the crag one thing is immediately apparent - the beauty and solitude of this area. Next, as you get to the base of the crag, is the quality of the rock - in some places absolutely shocking!
We got on an E1 called Full Sail, which is fairly steady, has reasonable rock though little in the way of gear for the first 20 metres. Keep your head together and you'll be fine.
We then waited for the tide to go out before getting on the rather perverse adventure of combining Knowing Her/Fascinating Witches/Scintillating Stitches giving 4 pitches at a grade of E2. This gives a straight up pitch followed by a 30m hand traverse, climb up 5 metres to hand traverse back to the original belay. Climb to the top... crazy but great fun.
