We flew to Limoges from Liverpool last Sunday and stayed over at Owen's dads place (a lovely big farm in the rolling hills of SW France). Every day was freezing cold in the morning turning to a pleasant heat in the afternoons with not a cloud in the sky all week!
The places we visited were L'arche, Cothiers, Champignon, Le Mur, Fontaine, La Voute and Face Nord. Nobody really knew what to expect and we got a rude awakening when we realised it was 90% monos in steep waves and roofs! The first day nearly ended in heatstroke for most of us as we had clearly picked an unsuitable exposed crag like L'Arche (although the views were nice!). Mike and I crushed a 7B+ called Monospace that had lovely locks between monos and stereos.. tweaky.
Cothiers had much more variety with slabs, walls, roofs and aretes involving 'normal' holds as well as the obligatory monos. Everyone got on well with this venue and the highlight for me was working a stunning roof problem called Apogee that came out of the bottom of a cave in a fine corner seam with lots of big moves to pockets and drop knees, bridging upside down..etc with the crux move right at the end! Mike tried it too and mooted 7C+ but alas it did not get sent with the baking heat getting worse. Dave was making good progress on an 8a roof fingerlocking crack called Geode that was also very aesthetic in nature.
The other venues were all close together with the Champignon and La Mur areas being by far the most popular. The Champignon is a fantastic free standing mushroom shaped pillar with lots of powerful dynamic problems between pockets, monos and slopers. Right next to it was the wall of Le Mur, a fantastic wave, not as steep as L'Arche but enough to make the climbing powerful and long. It featured some amazing giant hueco problems and slopey rockovers to yet more monos!
The last place we visisted was Face Nord, a shady venue with lots of hard problems and an apparent lack of traffic in recent years. I managed to end the trip on a personal high getting 2 more 7B+'s and Mike sent some sickening dyno from a shallow mono and thin backhand in a roof dynoing horizontally through a roof to a small bucket far over the lip. It goes at 8A but could well be harder, judging by the amount of effort and pain tolerance it seemed to take him!
I would definitely go back sometime as I found the style of climbing really challenging as well as suiting my style of pulling hard on small limestone holds with big moves thrown in. Can't wait to get back the Cave and Jerry's Roof now to try and utilise some of this training.
Au Revoir!
