CELEBRATION!!

After 8 days of sunny Spanish climbing, I return to soaking Scotland after what feels like a quantum leap in my climbing ability.

Siurana

It all started out rather ignominiously however. A warm sun, a few polished, slabby, technical nightmares and I was falling off 6b+ with tips about ready to submit for a modern art exhibit. Siurana was hard then... So how about a change of scene and a different kind of pain at Margalef? Well, either Margalef has the softest grades in Costa Daurada or my carefully structured pocket practice program (i.e. Never having climbed on pockets before) was uniquely suited to this conglomerate pocket pulling paradise and I was able to flash or on sight every route I tried bar one.

With some grades (if not perhaps hard routes) under my belt, I decided the winning formula was a to steer clear of slick sandbagged Siurana so swung by El Falco, near Arboli. Wow! "Technical" and "pumpy" symbols adorn the Rockfax guide to this 45m face like some bad splurge on 2 for 1 offers. Climbing on this wall was the finest day of my trip, culminating in clipping the chains on Chanidanger after a long fight and an epic amount of shaking out. I'd like to thank Dave MacLeod for telling me to work my weaknesses (I trusted microscopic footholds like I never have before) and Chris Sharma for his near religious use of the powerscream (the pump twisted, finger uncurling howl that escaped my lips while on the crux a metre from the chains would have scattered a pride of lions at 100 paces).

Harhar, thought I, with my new found fleet, fairy feet I shall conquer the land of Siurana. The only thing to land was me, with a thud, accompanied by the sound of air whistling out of an overinflated ego. I can highly recommend investing in as much technique as you can beg, copy or invent before reaching Siruana but none of this changes the fact that the grades there are as solid as a gold plated lead brick. I didn't flash any hard routes at Siurana but even when I was falling off (or more likely shouting "take" through a red haze of fingertip agony), I still often felt surprised by what I was able to stand on in quite a conscious manner I have rarely experienced before.

If you remember my last post, word for word, then the title to this one will make perfect sense (and also, you must be quite bored, so get up from your computer right now. _RIGHT NOW_ and go outside and do something new, anything!). Otherwise, here is a tick list to confirm that Dave MacLeod will shortly be relegated to second best climber in Scotland:

Grade	Style
7a+	1 flashed, 1 on sighted
7a	2 on sighted
6C+	2 on sighted
6C	3 flashed, 3 on sighted
5+ to 6B+	15, mixture of on sights and flashes

Now, the million dollar question: Can I convert anything I have learned to trad? I suspect that weather considered, that question is wholly academic.

Recommendations
I might as well give a few personal recommendations about what you should do if you would like to climb in Costa Daurada. Skip this if you are not going because it is BORING!

• Fly to Barcelona or Reus, hire a car, save money by avoiding the freeways with designations starting AP (toll roads). Go in Spring or Autumn.
• There are two Siurana guides, Toni Arbones' old guide has been superseded by a very colourful new guide that is really superb and available in the tourist info in Conudella de Montsant and probably elsewhere too.
• Limestone gets polished pretty quickly, to avoid polish, head to newer crags and avoid the "total classic" lines (the line just next door is probably as good and less worn).
• There are lots of foreign climbers who speak English but in most of the villages the locals speak little English spoken so some Spanish is useful.

AirFrance = better

I like to think of Ryanair in particular as a company who have spent many hours listening to advice from the very worst people in the world on how to perfect the fuckyou factor (FF). Besides enduring Ryanairs entire approach, by the time all the FF charges are added, it is only marginally cheaper than a lot of their considerably more sanitary rivals. I paid a little more to fly with AirFrance and avoid Ryanair and consequently:
- Nobody tried to sell me scratch cards or duty free on the plane.
- I had enough room to sit in a seat in reasonable comfort, even without an emergency exit row.
- I didn´t have to pay extra for luggage or attempt to check in wearing 3 coats with pockets crammed full.
- I was given free water, juice, coke, wine, biscuits.
- When an emergency exit row seat was available I was put in it for free and without any argument.

Now, as everything went as smoothly as a good 18 year old scotch, I cannot rightly comment on AirFrance´s problem solving abilities but I would be stunned if it wasn´t better than Ryanair´s standard response to problems which, from bitter experience, roughly equates to "Now, if sir would like to drop sirs trousers and bend over for one moment...".

If you are reading this now, I would like to urge you too to avoid Ryanair like the plague, spend slightly more on your flights and luxuriate in the lack of FF you enjoy as a direct result.

Climbing

Oh, suppose I´d better mention that I am in Spain and about to start sport climbing! Last time I wrote a grade aim on this blog it worked out quite well so I will go ahead and state that There will be dissapointment if I don´t manage to on sight at least one 7a at Siurana (and surrounds) and outright celebration if I should get a 7a+ in the same style. I have been sieging hard indoor routes for a couple of months, so with only a maximum of 9 days on the rock, I shall be trying hard not be lured into failing to redpoint a likely looking 8a all week long!

The Sound of the Surf

There is something about the sound of the sea eternally etching new patterns on a rocky shore, isn't there? Perhaps the peace it brings harks back to some prehistoric era, an Easter egg hidden in every mans subconscious for him to find. The sea to me is like unto a fire in the manner under which it snares my attention and draws me into a place where an eternally unique pattern of sight and sound are the limits of my perception and time has no meaning.

Yesterday as I hung in the amphitheatre of Orchestra Cave, surrounded by the sounds of the sea, I felt extrodinarily peaceful and relazed. It made me wonder if the sea could ever mean as much to me as mountains do.

October = winter

As I predicted, on October 1st there is a meteoric shift in weather patterns from "warm mixture" to "cold wetness", under the circumstances I am very happy to be leaving for sport in sunny Spain in a weeks time.

Starved of outdoor rock, I have had to resort to internet trolling and today I even fell as low as eating comfort food. For dinner alone I managed to guzzle a bottle of Dr Pepper and an entire New York cheesecake, adding up to a whopping:
154% of my energy RDA.
352% of my sugar RDA.
222% of my fat RDA.
420% of my saturated fat RDA.
Actually, I am now wishing fervently that I had not worked that out. It certainly helps to explain why I feel completely horrendous now that I am dealing with some of the side effects.

Perfect Day

I just realised that I have had a perfect day. A day in which everything went swimmingly well. Strange thing is that it was so similar to many other days I have that I nearly missed it. It almost seems unfair that I have good days almost every day while other languish in misery, is this because my glass is half full and other peoples glasses are half empty or is it because I really have fashioned such a wonderful life for myself? (Or am I deluding myself perhaps!?)

I should probably emphasize that it was a perfect day in the sense that everything that happened, more or less happened perfectly, not that every possible good thing happened on the same day.
I kicked off with arriving in good time for my tutorial where I successfully blagged the whole session in a haze of complete ignorance about the reading material which I hadn't had the time of inclination to look hard for. I spent a protracted lunch laughing at a comedy and avoided what turned out to be a snore inducing nightmare first lecture (I was tipped of by its title), only to turn up for the second lecture which was the single best lecture in the course so far by an order of magnitude. The third lecture was cancelled on the spur of the moment and thusly was a day of university concluded.
A quick session down at the climbing wall saw me dispatch my project and figure out all the hardest moves on the hardest route in the centre which had stymied me previously. Everything was rounded off nicely with wine and meatball bolognese.

A life of simplicity is a life of happiness and I hope I never forget that. If you are reading this and I have, then please remind me.