A new year.

I decided to be fashionably late with this years first blog (due to the fact there has been nothing of note to report). I had a couple of good trips to font at the end of 2011 whilst staying at The House which Andy and Roo have done a good job with. The first trip was with mark, psyche, Peter, Shauna, James, Alex and Chris but unfortunately we experienced very damp and humid conditions which made for a frustrating few days out (especially so for Chris who was hobbling around after an altercation on a parisian ring road).

Despite the shit conditions it was nice to finish off some old nemesis' in the form of eclipse and l'arrache coeur and also a brilliant and slightly worrying highball in Cuvier, the name of which escapes me!

The second trip over there was more enjoyable as it was just me and Laura and we had the whole gite to ourselves with it being mid December, where the weather is a bit of a lottery. It did prove to be overcast, damp and a bit showery but we still climbed for 4 days out of 5, the best day being the one which looked the least promising, -1 degrees but absolutely perfect!

The highlights of trip 2 were Laura walking up duroxmanie before a Huthwaite style top out and a rapid spotter less ascent of some 6c+ slab with 1 little pad far below. I finally found friction and got 2 of the big 4 with the big boss in a couple of tries this trip and likewise fourmis rouges which felt like climbing with Velcro on my hands! Fantastic stuff.

Instead of my usual early trip abroad to go climbing, I am currently across the world in Melbourne staying at an old friends. It has been a bit of a winter break from climbing with a couple of trips to the local wall in a whole month. I've enjoyed going swimming quite a few times in 50m pools which were a bit of a killer, right down to the 15m one in the apartment I am in. I've not swam regularly since I was in a team at the age of 10 and I think it is something I could get into doing again of a morning.

I'm here for 1 more day before visiting holger in the blue mountains for the last few days of my trip and hopefully we will get out on some real rock , so I can wake the corpse up from this binge of beer, cocktails, coffee and many bbq's.

I am looking forward to getting back and seeing Laura again and cracking on with this years goals of unfinished business. Then it is time to get strong as hell for Louis Armstrong. I am sure Lore's visit will give me the necessary inspiration :)