Cornwall was not bad really considering the weather was as inconsiderate to me as it always is. I had originally planned to stay down for at least a week maybe nine days but a lack of money and indifferent weather conditions resulted in me bailing early. Arrived circa 11AM on the Tuesday and after meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend who I was staying with I decided to head down to Little Fistral for a quick check on how weak I am which it turned out was bordering on very.
Little Fistral is never going to going to be considered a premier venue for bouldering and would struggle to get into the second or even the third division if we are honest. It consists of an overhanging wall with two maybe three traverses on it all about 10 metres long max. There are also a few up problems of debatable quality but it is a venue I know and I wanted to get the middle traverse done if possible. The hardest part of the problem is getting to the main line of the traverse itself which consists of about 7 moves with the crux being bumping the left hand across with the right on a decentish sized flat hold. In essence a 5+ which requires a bit of thought regarding footwork and body position and after that it is piss. Anyway I worked out the sequence to get into position to get the flatty and from there it was one move and pretty much over. Did I do it? No in a word - if I had been on my own I probably would have done but my brother and his girlfriend had decided to accompany me and conditions were less than hospitable with a stiff onshore breeze carrying with it large amounts of salt spray and the like so I decided to bail out for a beer and cordial relations.
Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much rained out and nothing got done apart from travelling about and eating and drinking too much but Friday was a better day so I went up to Helman Tor for some easier bouldering and general exploration. Getting there was interesting due to turning left about 200 yards too soon which resulted in driving down some very narrow "roads" with grass growing down the middle of them - seriously out back of beyond! After a bit of guesswork I eventually arrived and once I had figured out that the topo was not exactly accurate in relation to distance and where things were located it turned out to be a nice place to be albeit a rather windy one. There was some sort of bird of prey flying over the valley below, some really rough granite to deal with and some nice views just to make it really pleasant. As it was I got a few problems done and backed off a few more mainly due to the remoteness issue but also the wind howling across the top which made things seem that little bit more tenuous. Still it is a worthwhile venue if you have a couple of hours to kill.
Little Fistral is never going to going to be considered a premier venue for bouldering and would struggle to get into the second or even the third division if we are honest. It consists of an overhanging wall with two maybe three traverses on it all about 10 metres long max. There are also a few up problems of debatable quality but it is a venue I know and I wanted to get the middle traverse done if possible. The hardest part of the problem is getting to the main line of the traverse itself which consists of about 7 moves with the crux being bumping the left hand across with the right on a decentish sized flat hold. In essence a 5+ which requires a bit of thought regarding footwork and body position and after that it is piss. Anyway I worked out the sequence to get into position to get the flatty and from there it was one move and pretty much over. Did I do it? No in a word - if I had been on my own I probably would have done but my brother and his girlfriend had decided to accompany me and conditions were less than hospitable with a stiff onshore breeze carrying with it large amounts of salt spray and the like so I decided to bail out for a beer and cordial relations.
Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much rained out and nothing got done apart from travelling about and eating and drinking too much but Friday was a better day so I went up to Helman Tor for some easier bouldering and general exploration. Getting there was interesting due to turning left about 200 yards too soon which resulted in driving down some very narrow "roads" with grass growing down the middle of them - seriously out back of beyond! After a bit of guesswork I eventually arrived and once I had figured out that the topo was not exactly accurate in relation to distance and where things were located it turned out to be a nice place to be albeit a rather windy one. There was some sort of bird of prey flying over the valley below, some really rough granite to deal with and some nice views just to make it really pleasant. As it was I got a few problems done and backed off a few more mainly due to the remoteness issue but also the wind howling across the top which made things seem that little bit more tenuous. Still it is a worthwhile venue if you have a couple of hours to kill.
View from the walk in.
The mat marks the centre of the three problems on this block - the left hand problem (no arête) is one I backed off more than once as the top out is a very rough but slopey horror show, the centre problem I couldn't work out the start and the right hand one is easy as.
There is a seriously good looking problem up the centre of this wall at about 6b - one to go back and try for sure.
Not a difficult problem up the flakes (I did it sans mat) but nice all the same.
Didn't even bother with this - slab to a big roof with a decent prang potential if you got it wrong!
Another three lines up here - I looked briefly at the left and centre problems but didn't have a serious go as there is a deepening gully from the left hand side that you can't see. The right hand problem is not one to fall off at all as warned in the topo - I couldn't see anyway that you would walk away from it if you did. There are a couple more problems and a project around the corner of the right arête including a really nice looking line up a ramp but they all start from a ledge about a metre wide with a fair sized drop off behind that. The project is a blunt arete that looked simply nails. There is also a couple from the cave to the left of this - one really hard problem on small holds and an easier one that I could figure out the start of but the finish (and the point of it) was lost on me.
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