Paddy Fields

Please enjoy these shots of Hampi's Paddy Fields by clicking on the link to my other blog below

The Camera and I

Thunder and Lightning

It’s been getting hotter and hotter here and the freezing glacial streams look more and more tempting for a quick dip to cool off. I’ve been introducing some visiting Brits and Swedes to the boulders and managed a huge sessions of repeats and then worked a 7A in the cool of the forest of Bagni until a crystal slashed my finger tip. I was so close and a new sequence discovered by one of the Swedes am sure would have guaranteed success, but with a 7B in the bag a couple of days before I am feeling quite content about how my climbing has improved.

The hot days have produced an incredible violent reaction from the surrounding mountains, vast thunder and lightning storms. The current one has raged for two days, at night the pour of the rain drums constantly into the tent and flooding the campsite. The lightning comes in blinding flashes, piercing sealed eye lids and preventing any sleep, outside the flashes can be separated into blues, reds, oranges and brilliant whites. Inside the tent it feels like some strobe lighting. You find yourself counting the seconds from the lightning flash to the thunder which machine guns around the valley its cracks echoing off the Granite walls. You count not because of some school boy science experiment, but because you earnestly want to know how close the lightning is, feeling incredible vulnerable inside the tent, unable to sleep from the rain, thunder and lightning you try not to even reach up, hoping the insulation of your rubber mat will be of some use. Even with my rational brain telling me that there are plenty of other higher and better conductors out there, your brain still goes around in circles. Suddenly those long hot and greasy days when climbing seems almost impossible seem a blessing to those longs days stuck in the campsite bar, trying not to spend anything and playing Monopoly against the computer.

With the thunder and lightning hopefully ending Yvette is coming over for a five day climbing trip, this gives me the opportunity to take in the shores of Lake Como as I head down to Milan to pick her up and with her departure my time and Val di Mello ends. It’s on to Magic Woods and those magic grades and the tedium and organisation of Switzerland.

Some Bouldering Photos from Val di Mello

Stephan on a 7A dyno

Stephan on a powerful 6B crack climb

Raphael on a roadside 6c

Sam on the first 6C in Val di Mello

Chris warming up on a 5C

Scenic Val di Mello

I sort of told a half truth when I said I was staying at Val di Mello, I’m actually about a mile down the valley next to the Sasso Remano boulder. I took my first proper trip into Val di Mello today as a rest day, hiking up the valley as the road runs out pretty early on. Now, I know I made a big thing about how amazing my current location was, but I think the actual Val di Mello has come up trumps. I don’t think I need to go into detail after my last post, it’s just more of the same, rivers, waterfalls, meadows, cliffs and mountains. But wow, I’ll let the following photos do the talking. You might want to click on them as I don’t think they appear very small in the browser and you might want to appreciate them a bit larger.

But enough of the scenery, the people here make it just as much an amazing place as the views. On my first night I wandered up to San Martino for a beer at the local bar, unfortunately my small change didn’t quite reach the needed €2, and the bar didn’t have change for €50. It was simple to them, just pay tomorrow. So up I went the next evening to pay back my debt and visit another cafe. Unfortunately I timed my trip dreadful and the skies completely opened. I sat there hoping for a gap in the rain to dash the mile back to camp, but it never came. As always the locals had the answer, an umbrella, I was on my, return my umbrella the next day.

My rest day hiking up the Val di Mello also couldn’t have been made more cheerful by the locals, everyone stopped to chat in broken English and Italian (my Italian is slowly improving). Lunch was at a refugio where I just ordered the local food with the help of my phrase book. The local stonemason told me I had to have the local wine with the meal as it was the best and he nosed through my climbing guidebook through the meal pointing at climbers he knew and areas which were very good. The meal was exactly what you would expect, nothing fancy; a starter of cheese and salami with bread and a main of thick creamy / cheesy polenta with a bit of meat on the side. The wine was coarse and acidic, helping me not to drink too much and cutting the richness of the Polenta which was so filling I had to leave some. So as not to upset the cook I made sure to learn ‘very good’ in Italian. To finish the meal the Stonemason who seemed to live at the refugio gave me a climber’s rate of €10 for the whole meal of starter, main and half a litre of wine. Might have to make this trip part of the weekly regime!

Boycott the Olympics

It feels like these last few weeks have gone on for ages. Everything here seems to cost so much, I would be keen to travel around and see bits of England if it wasn’t for the cost of Petrol, the cost of public transport and the cost of getting into museums and galleries. I’ve had to fill my time with my daily coffee ritual in Guildford (the waitress knows my order by heart now) a few games of Killer Soduko, bread making and a bit of photography.

Me and Yvette have started to grow our own herbs in boxes in the windows, fingers crossed they don’t meet the same fate as most other plants I look after.

Wish there was more green stuff I could do, I am trying to make a point and not get plastic bags when I buy things. To help with this I ordered a Free Tibet carrier bag for all my shopping, this was a week ago and still nothing has arrived. Not sure how this bag will go down with the large number of Chinese students who currently live in Guildford, but hey ho guess if the Tibetans don’t have freedom of speech it’s our duty to speak for them. Would also put a big plea out to my few readers out there not to support this coming Olympics in Beijing, China’s human rights record is one of the worst in the world, freedom of speech is not existent and in many cases they are using the Olympics and perceived (false) threat of Terrorism to crack down on any dissidents. When granted the Olympics they promised to clean up their act and haven’t, the International Olympics committee isn’t doing anything so it comes down to you and me to stand up and say it isn’t right. China is using the Olympics as a coming out exhibition for the world, we should oppose this till they clean up their act. It’s easy for me to boycott the games as I will be away in Europe during it and have no access to a t.v, so its’ simple for me not to watch it. Anyhow enough of me trying to tweak your conscience, better get back to organising my trip to Europe.

Cheese, Pate, Pastries and Wine

Travelling in France has mixed blessings, after the bustle of English roads driving is very sedentary. You never seem to encounter traffic jams, everyone actually seems to be able to drive and when you stop at a service station the food is actually edible. The food is almost always interesting and different; I can’t recall seeing a single McDonalds or Burger King. Maybe it is this which prevents hoards of Brits descending on the country. The restaurant opening times are a bit haphazard, they seem to open and close when ever suites the owner. Finding only the one restaurant out of a high street of six restaurants open on a Friday night was bizarre and to compound this, the restaurant was a kebab house. I had been fully kebabed out for the year in Turkey and this was the last meal I wanted.

The Forest of Fontainebleau

The purpose of our trip was to avoid the usual bank holiday rain in England and enjoy the sun and sandstone bouldering of Fontainebleau. The vast forests surrounding the Royal palace of Fontainebleau where the hunting grounds for the Kings of France, well they where till they chopped their heads off. Within the maize of tracks and paths lies mountains of sandstone boulders, deposited their by some geological phenomenon. Each area has marked routes going up and down the boulders linking them together, providing a training ground for mountaineers from Paris going to the Alps. Each circuit is marked with a different colour, usually yellow the easiest, then orange, blue, red and finally white or Black. With each boulder typically being between three to five metres high and around fifty problems in a circuit you can quickly climb many hundred metres in a day. Or alternatively as I did just choice the problems which look the most fun and play about on them.

Me, about to fall off the last moves of this problem

When you are not bouldering you are usually either eating or drinking, the reputation of French cheese needs little introduction and this combined with some Pate and an ample supply of French bread usually ensures any calories lost climbing are quickly replaced at lunch. After climbing, just in case we hadn’t eaten enough for lunch the Patisserie’s offer such a vast array of sweet pastries with cream and chocolate in them that you are guaranteed not to lose any weight on a trip out here. If you are lucky after a day of Cheese, Pate, Bread and Pastries you might find room for the evening meal, which is never going to be light.

Yvette, enjoying one of the steep problems

After all this it is a relief to be back in control of my meals, but am coming to realise this summer’s trip around Europe might not be a very slim one.