North Wales

What a weekend! I have just got back from one of the best weekend away I have had with the club in a long, long time! The drive up was long and for the most part boring, that was until we came round a corner to be confront by a head on crash between two cars that had happened just moments ago. Luckily nobody was injured, but one of the cars proceeded to go up in flames! By the time the fire brigade had arrived the whole car was a inferno that took several minutes to put out. We kept on edging back and back down the road though, split between wanting to have a better look and not wanting to have the thing explode in our faces; as it turns out (rather disappointingly I might add) burning cars don't explode; stupid films giving the wrong impression! They just burn, very very well. A few hours later and we were at the hut, which is very nice and swanky with alpine style beds for us all to sleep on. I don't remember much about this night, except trying out lots and lots of different climbing problems on the beams and beds. This all stopped when I jumped from the bed to the beam and flip landing square on my back! Ouch! 

The next day half of us got a lie in as we were going to the Inter-Wales competition, whilst the others got up at the crack of dawn to go winter climbing. The lie in was truly nice seeing as I've been getting up rather early these past few weeks to do work. Then after a quick walk to the shop in the beautiful crisp winter morning that was North Wales, we all bundled into the minibus and set off for the climbing wall. I was definitely jealous of all the people doing scotland training though, the whether was brilliant!  All around us, we were surrounded by these beautiful snow capped mountains; I just wanted to go and run up them and try and find some winter climbing to be had! But we were to be stuck in the competition for most of day and so turned out minds to winning this comp. I did pretty goddamn awful in this competition t has to be said, scoring a measly 75 out of 250. I knew I did bad, I could feel that I wasn't in the right mind set, every attempt of a problem something went wrong, mainly because I was rushing it in my head. Too aggressive, too tense, I didn't let the sequences flow, just threw myself angrily at the wall.  But never-mind, at least our teams did well! Heather winning 3rd place in the women's competition and our first team coming 4th overall. 

That night, after a few hours messing around at the hut, we went to the bouldering comp party at a local pub with a hog roast!... That cost four pounds (not on your life). Olly, Tom and I also got called cheeky for drinking our last cans of foster outside the pub. Naughty, Naughty! The pub overall was fun; it turned out that I had broken a Bangor student's wrist whilst playing rugby against him in Font, woops! He seemed quite alright about it... luckily! Though his friend said he was mightily pissed off at the time, having to drive one handed to the hospital to get it checked out! And then I managed to accidently punch a girl in the face whilst imitating an over the head Ice-axe placement. (*cringes*) But apart from my bouts of clumsiness the rest of the night passed quite amicably. Oh and Johnny Dawes was in the pub!

The next day we woke up earlier. After a lot of faffing, arguing and cleaning we left the hut and headed for our last day of climbing. One bus went to the slate quarries for a crimpy day of fun, whilst the other minibus went into the mountains. Half went up a grade one scramble, whilst the others went up a grade three. I, equipped with marks size-to-small boots, went up the grade three and it was truly stunning! I even managed to use the ice axe a bit at the end in a Scottish II (ish) gully. But you can see a lot of this in the movie below so I won't endeavor to explain in any  more detail. 

After this gully, we summited the smaller subsidiary high point (we couldn't be bothered to walk to the summit) and then made our way down a boring ridge line that seemed to go on forever! An hour later we arrived back at the road, I grabbed a cup of tea and waited for everyone else to turn up, which they all did in due time. Then we hopped onto the bus and made our way back to Cardiff. It took a long time and it turns out my big toenail had gone black from the pressure in mark's boots and was extremely painful for the rest of the journey! 

And that was pretty much it! You will have to excuse the boring way that I have written this account, I feel I should be doing real work at this current moment, not some arty messing around with a blog! So I have written quickly what best I have recalled from this trip; hopefully if I have more time in the week I can develop something a bit more interesting for you all to read! I hope you have enjoyed it anyway! Hopefully see you all (well CUMC at least) at the pub tonight! 

Jamie