Day 77 - Finding Our Feet

spot the kestrel

Every time I go on a climbing holiday...every sodding time!

Ok so I've only been on three, and it's only happened on two of them...but still, really?!  Again?!!

Having endured a long day of travelling yesterday, after a super busy few weeks at work, I arrived tired, nay, exhausted, and ready for rest and adventure.  I realise they're probably mutually exclusive, but what can I say?  I'm ambitious!

Despite being so tired, somehow it was 1am by the time we went to bed, and of course I sparked out pretty sharpish, as is my wont.

So far, so good...

And then I woke up a mere 4.5 hours later, 2 hours before dawn, and that was it, awake.  More annoyingly, I felt the beginnings of a cold irritating my throat and sinuses...great.

I lay there for an hour trying to get back to sleep, before both giving and getting up.

I read a little, sent an email or two, and got annoyed with Orange for being the Worst Telecoms Company in the History of the World, before dozing off for an hour on the sofa, at around 8.30am.

I was determined to climb though.  I often feel better whilst climbing - my mind/body seems to make a point of putting the lurgy to one side, preferring to focus fully on not falling off and injuring itself.

The walk up to the climb was exhausting, and I realised that the lurgy was settling onto my chest...brilliant, thanks.

If you look at this picture, we started climbing around about where Anna's finger is pointing...

finger of fun

To give you a sense of scale, I would have been quite a bit smaller than Anna's finger, had I been at the start of that particular climb.   It was nearly 30m straight up to the obvious crack feature directly above where Anna is pointing...so it was quite a climb just to get to the start of the climb!

Anyway, we had a good time finding our feet on this new type of rock, which was very sharp and grippy, and cut our hands to shreds....and it turned out that our feet were on the ends of our legs, where they usually are!  Probably should have predicted that one...

Of course, during the journey home I felt worse and worse, and I'm now full of cold, sneezing, snotting, aching and generally feeling futterly ucked.   

Ho hum, and bah humbug!

But to finish on a lighter note, one of the key characteristics of the day was the birds of prey that constantly wheeled and called overhead.  We think probably kestrels.  In any case, we had fabulous views of them from above as they soared around the valley.  We so rarely get to see these beautiful creatures from above, and it was a real treat to see the ruddy red colouring on their backs. 

So did you spot the kestrel?  If you zoom in to the photo at the top, you'll see one just below the top of the picture, about 30% in from the right...