On the Mend!

After some sage advice from the ukb forums and a chat to Pete Chadwick on the phone, I have nursed the left arm of weakness towards the road of recovery.

I basically did no climbing at all for 6 days whilst performing light weight exercises in work sat on my arse. These are all aimed at fixing the small tissue/tendons that support the major muscle groups in the arm which have apparently grown strong (a debatable point!) whilst the small bits have been on holiday, meaning imbalance and pain.

Anyway...

I tentatively arranged an outdoor rock climbing trip with my good friend Benedict and met him in a leafy Hartford village on Tuesday afternoon. The strong boys were heading to the cave but I couldn't quite face it just yet and it would probably set me back again in terms of recovering fully. The venue of choice was Harmer's Wood as I figured it was going to be relatively easy on the arms and a good finger workout as well as a test of footwork!

Upon arrival I was really impressed with the stand-out aretes and highball walls, all with nice flat landings in a fairly open plan space that felt quite peaceful.

A local guy turned up who was part of the local village team who had been working on making the area easy to access and family friendly. I just followed Ben around climbing almost everything and offering grades for each one (that somehow amazingly matched what himself and Andy had agreed on).

There were some really brilliant climbs from F5+ to F7B with the classics being The highball rib line, Queen of Hearts, Harmadillo and Baby Bloc.

At the end of our 3 hour session my fingers were truly destroyed and my toes ached as I found wearing super tight, thin 5.10 projects and standing on small edges made the toes work overtime.

The climbing was fantastic and very similar to Pex in places but a much nicer venue overall in terms of landings, lack of litter and no scallies (save for Ben and Chezzie Si).

I didn't manage one of Ben's harder lines and didn't get on the line left of Baby Bloc, so will most likely be going back again Tuesday next week to finish these off. It was nice to be climbing pain free again and should be good to go in the cave/s lakes again after Tuesday assuming all goes well.

Here is a local lady who turned up clearly psyched for some hardcore sandstone crimping: