10 days away in France and I didn't even see a cloud! The trip started fiery hot when Graeme persuaded me to try some chili sauce, Dragons blood or something. Extreme, and that was just a trace of a taste, luckily the dangerous Naga chemicals were forgotten back in the car and didn't have to be explained to any customs officials looking for chemical weapons. Waking up the morning after the drive south it felt good to be back in springtime Font and I was sort of keen to try some problems, when I did find a suitably easy problem to attempt it was, as I expected, hard work. Several months away from climbing was bound to lead to a drop in performance so to try and get back to climbing at somewhere near my previous level I left Font and headed to the Normandy coast.
While I was away Pete and Graeme set about some good problems and projects, Graeme getting fingers that are more used to plastic a bit thrashed on his projects while Pete went for mileage on his 7a quest. When I returned everyone was happy with the problems they had climbed but I'm sure their wafer thin skin was deeply happy that the chili sauce never made it over the channel.
My west coast training consisted of large streak barbecue's, beer, sitting around and, although I'm usually not a fan of sea food, very tasty scallops. It was cool to see my family and afterwards, luckily, there was enough time to get back to Font and give my fingers some exercise. The weekend I arived back in Font was a bank holiday and lots of UK boulderers had descended on Isatis, Sabot, Cuvier etc, car parks were full with GB, D, B and E plated vehicles but few French! Lots of chalk had been slapped over the usual problems and not brushed off, I hope this level of use is sustainable. Luckily we could still find some quieter problems to try and I enjoyed hauling myself up a 6c.
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