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With the wind blowing strongly on our last day, we walked up to Poets to try some of the routes there. Eve and I, given the goal of putting in some mileage, started the day with Demeter which, at 4c, was a total cakewalk. The others tried harder routes — I think Izzy climbed Ganymede — but we quickly decided to move round to the main area.
As we were packing up, I got talking to Gav about his bag — a now-discontinued Quechua rucksack with all sorts of climbing-specific features. As he was going through it, giving us the grand tour, he spotted what looked like an extremely mouldy banana in a plastic bag and promptly freaked out. Closer examination proved that the object was not a banana but a severed goat's foot which Tom had found lying and around and had stashed in Gav's bag!
As we were leaving we a goat's skull and, unable to resist temptation, Izzy and I set about taking some photos. Firstly with the skull balanced on top of a nearby rickety gate:
And then with it hung off a piece of rebar attached to the gate. Unable to reach from the ground, it was clear that one of us had to pick the other up. As I was still wearing my harness, I got to be the one to pick Izzy up on my shoulders and while I may not be able to one-handed pull-ups, I was able to lift her up with no trouble at all. And once we had the skull positioned, the resulting photos more than justified our efforts:
At the main area we split up, with Tom, Hayley, Andrew and Izzy going round the corner to Couer D'Armeos work some harder stuff, while Eve, Gav and I stayed to rack up some mileage. Here's the main wall from the approach, with Gavin at the base of the crag giving an idea of the scale:
This shot of Eve on Sapfo might just be my favourite shot of the week — I especially like the depth of field and the way you can see the next four quickdraws:
We finished the day with Mustass, which featured a nice slabby start with tufas at the top. I climbed first and Gav, who was super-psyched, stormed up to stripped the route:
With the day complete and the week's climbing done, the three of us went down the hill for showers and a rest before meeting the others at the cocktail bar ahead of our final dinner at the Ageaen. Eve and I hit the bar, where we spent a while drinking tea, before deciding heading back to the hotel to change into long sleaves. On the way we met Gavin and we stood about debating the situation for a while. Just as we'd decided to go to the restaurant, the others arrived and we all walked down together, pausing briefly to allow them to buy tickets on the ferry to Kos for tomorrow.
Sat indoors, out of the wind but with big windows giving us a fantastic panoramic view of Telendos and the bay, we were amused to see Gaz Parry's group sitting not too far away — we think they might be stalking us, because they were also at Prego yeseterday. I had the same mixed Greek vegetarian dish as before while the others all had seafood, with everyone but Eve, who had red snapper, opting for a tuna stake.
Towards the end of dinner, Gav and Tom decided to do a bit of coaching. They decided to make a paper fortune teller — I'm sure I remember these being called chickens when I was at school &mdsah; to help them identify our weaknesses. With Andrew's help, we soon had a fortune teller made from a paper place mat which identified everyone's areas for improvement with uncanny accuracy. We concluded that the thing was clearly inhabited by a great spirit and should be destroyed at the first possible opportunity, least it fall into the wrong hands.
After supper we adjourned to the cocktail bar were we again met up with Gaz, now without his group, and we settled down for some proper coaching and some homework. Tom, a primary school teacher by profession, made up a grid and got us to write down the things we thought we'd done well at this week, our areas for improvement, and our goals for the future. Once we'd done this, they turned the piece of paper over and compared what they'd said with what we'd said and assigned us some things to concentrate on to help us improve.
As we were packing up, I got talking to Gav about his bag — a now-discontinued Quechua rucksack with all sorts of climbing-specific features. As he was going through it, giving us the grand tour, he spotted what looked like an extremely mouldy banana in a plastic bag and promptly freaked out. Closer examination proved that the object was not a banana but a severed goat's foot which Tom had found lying and around and had stashed in Gav's bag!
As we were leaving we a goat's skull and, unable to resist temptation, Izzy and I set about taking some photos. Firstly with the skull balanced on top of a nearby rickety gate:
And then with it hung off a piece of rebar attached to the gate. Unable to reach from the ground, it was clear that one of us had to pick the other up. As I was still wearing my harness, I got to be the one to pick Izzy up on my shoulders and while I may not be able to one-handed pull-ups, I was able to lift her up with no trouble at all. And once we had the skull positioned, the resulting photos more than justified our efforts:
At the main area we split up, with Tom, Hayley, Andrew and Izzy going round the corner to Couer D'Armeos work some harder stuff, while Eve, Gav and I stayed to rack up some mileage. Here's the main wall from the approach, with Gavin at the base of the crag giving an idea of the scale:
This shot of Eve on Sapfo might just be my favourite shot of the week — I especially like the depth of field and the way you can see the next four quickdraws:
We finished the day with Mustass, which featured a nice slabby start with tufas at the top. I climbed first and Gav, who was super-psyched, stormed up to stripped the route:
With the day complete and the week's climbing done, the three of us went down the hill for showers and a rest before meeting the others at the cocktail bar ahead of our final dinner at the Ageaen. Eve and I hit the bar, where we spent a while drinking tea, before deciding heading back to the hotel to change into long sleaves. On the way we met Gavin and we stood about debating the situation for a while. Just as we'd decided to go to the restaurant, the others arrived and we all walked down together, pausing briefly to allow them to buy tickets on the ferry to Kos for tomorrow.
Sat indoors, out of the wind but with big windows giving us a fantastic panoramic view of Telendos and the bay, we were amused to see Gaz Parry's group sitting not too far away — we think they might be stalking us, because they were also at Prego yeseterday. I had the same mixed Greek vegetarian dish as before while the others all had seafood, with everyone but Eve, who had red snapper, opting for a tuna stake.
Towards the end of dinner, Gav and Tom decided to do a bit of coaching. They decided to make a paper fortune teller — I'm sure I remember these being called chickens when I was at school &mdsah; to help them identify our weaknesses. With Andrew's help, we soon had a fortune teller made from a paper place mat which identified everyone's areas for improvement with uncanny accuracy. We concluded that the thing was clearly inhabited by a great spirit and should be destroyed at the first possible opportunity, least it fall into the wrong hands.
After supper we adjourned to the cocktail bar were we again met up with Gaz, now without his group, and we settled down for some proper coaching and some homework. Tom, a primary school teacher by profession, made up a grid and got us to write down the things we thought we'd done well at this week, our areas for improvement, and our goals for the future. Once we'd done this, they turned the piece of paper over and compared what they'd said with what we'd said and assigned us some things to concentrate on to help us improve.
