Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Rather than spend the afternoon indoors, we took advantage of the glorious weather and dragged ourselves up to Bonehill for an afternoon of bouldering.


We started with Baby Slab, warming up with the easy 5 up the middle and then doing the simple 4 up the arete.


E making light work of the 5. It's a really nice way into things: solid feet and lots of positive holds the whole way up.

With that settled, we moved over to the Cube and worked some of the 6s on the northwestern size.


Unable to reach the obvious hold up to the left, E tried out a completely different beta...


B and I tried a different method involving a heel hook and a reach for the next hold. I managed to get my hand on statically the first time I tried it and then fell off on my every subsequent attempt, largely because I was unwilling to risk a sliced up hand in order to stick the move.


Partway through the afternoon we bumped into H, whom we both know by sight from Exeter, who was out for her first ever boulder on the moor. Here she's going from a standing start into the first move...


...and on into part of E's beta.

Admitting defeat on the 6c, we all tried out a couple of easier routes including something graded 6a which felt far easier — which suggests that we'd misread it and done another problem instead.


I think this was graded a four. It certainly felt like it after the stuff in the high six range.


This is why they say that Dartmoor is sharper than a werewolf's teeth and why people recommend you go often and keep the sessions short...

With the others delayed by traffic around Stonehenge, it wasn't until midday that I caught the bus out to the Park & Ride for the first part of the trip to Dartmoor. The signs weren't encouraging: within seconds of stepping out of my front door, it had started raining; by the time I was on the bus, it was torrential; and when I got off, the roads were like rivers. Fortunately for me, the strong winds had driven the rain east by the time the car arrived and I managed to avoid a complete drenching.

With the others showing signs of hanger — hunger-induced-anger — we stopped at a petrol station en route to pick up some food. Sadly the place had been picked clean and all that remained were Dairylea Lunchables and Cathedral City cheese & pickle snack packs, but that didn't stop our valiant climbers from refuelling on the finest processed cheese known to humanity. Which was just as well because we took a long detour on the way to Bonehill, ending up in Manaton after falling back on dead reckoning. After passing Becky Falls a couple of times, we finally got back on track and arrived at our destination about twenty minutes later than expected, to find the moor it's usual brooding and spectacular self:



After getting our bearings we moved round to the warm-up wall and started with a couple of easy problems.

( Warming up... )

Not being greatly sold on the warm-up landing, we moved round the corner and spent a good chunk of the afternoon working the Cube.

( The cube... )

We then moved round the corner and spent the last part of the afternoon working on the problems around Greg's Dyno:

( Greg's Dyno... )

With time running out on us, we packed up, headed back to town via Ashburton, and stopped off at the hotel to allow the others to drop off their kit. Washed and tidied — well, N was, as least — we drove out to Honiton to pick up H's mother in law for supper at the Hare and Hounds out towards Sidbury. The Australian contingent went for the carvery, I went for a charming butternut squash pie, and V had a veggie korma from the children's / small appetite menu. We had a nice evening, talking about everything under the sun from the 2011 Brisbane flood to the mechanics of eBay to whether pubs and cafes might be a suitable environment for doing some pen-and-ink drawings.

Tired and happy we headed home, dropping V off in Honiton just as the van carrying the pigeons off to their next race was about to leave, before returning to Exeter; me to my place and the others to their hotel in St Thomas.