Margalef

We left Siurana and travelled across the hills to Margalef. Although Siurana was amazing for the scenery and being able to watch Steve McClure onsight his way through an 8b and and 8b+ in a day I needed something that suited me a bit more. The village of Margalef must rate as one of the quietest in Spain, a half empty store, closed refuge and the odd trickling fountain. But we’re not staying in the village but up a wiggling track with steep roofs of rock powering their way over your head as you drive through. This is what we came here for, short steep and powerful routes in deep pockets.
Waiting to Climb
The rock is a limestone conglomerate, so limestone packed with pebbles and stones, where these fall out you have your perfect lipped pockets to pull on, where they haven’t a slopey crimp or future foothold to use. The other thing which is different in Margalef is the wind! We enjoy light warm breezes throughout the day which stop us overheating on the routes. As dusk comes down these are replaced by gales which rip through the valley, changing direction every few minutes to shake the van and toss our chairs across the campsite if we’re not sat in them.
Charlie and Gillian warming up
Moving away from Margalef and back to my last post, I think I may have been guilty for using my blog and this keyboard to vent my frustrations, sometimes on a long trip when it’s just the two of you it can feel like your only outlet, hence the bit of re-editing on my last post. But moving on, Margalef might not be as beautiful as Siurana but the climbing here has cheered me up, we have enjoyed every route we have been on from pumpy 6b warm-ups to very steep pocket pulls on 7b’s and 7c’s. I still have not mastered the art of redpointing a route where you practice the moves before linking them together from the ground up; but I’m making progress. One thing you do notice on the routes here is how much your body gets pumped by them, even a warm up, although none of the moves are harder than any other place we are climbed we find our forearms screaming with lactic acid within a few clips.
We’re finding that we are strong enough for almost anything, but just lack the stamina, I cruised my way through the crux of a 7b+ only to fail a clip from the end as my stamina failed and I couldn’t cling onto the easier climbing to finish. At the moment we are just trying to climb everything we see, we have a few goes on some of the harder stuff but if it doesn’t go quickly we move on and find more entertainment.
Ben at full stretch in Margalef
We have two more days of pocket pulling to go before moving up to see Raul and Sabina near Barcelona then onwards to France for the final week and a bit of the trip.