No trip to Cornwall would be complete without ticking a route and what a route we managed - Astral Stroll, one of the classics of the South West. 21 years since I’d last been on it so I couldn’t remember much (or anything at all as it turned out). Mark hadn’t even done it, he said he’d always been keeping it for a perfect day.

As it turns out a perfect day was exactly what we got - calm seas, beautiful sunshine, a high tide during the afternoon and not too greasy on the rock. The route turned out to be bigger, badder and better than I remembered it. It also turned out that my memory of the route was completely wrong but there you go.

The end result was that we both thought it might be almost worth E2 and quite serious if you got stuck on it. I wouldn’t want to be struggling on pitch 3 with a huge swell and a partner who was pushing their grade a bit!

Photo: Mark seconding pitch 2 of Astral Stroll after the drop-down move.

I knocked up a full topo in PDF format which gives you that useful view of the route before you commit yourself.

Download the Astral Stroll MicroGUIDE

Hannah at St. Michael’s Mount

Well what do you know!? - maybe some of Craggs’ weather luck is rubbing off after all. One week in Cornwall and sun on every day, in fact only a tiny bit of rain during a showery day (at Eden Project) and during the night. We choose our week well since things seem to be back to normal this week. Our Dutch friends who came over had been dreading it a bit since all they kept hearing on the TV was about floods in England. Everyone in the Netherlands thought they were mad. Then half way through the week we heard a weather forecast for the whole of Europe and Cornwall and northern Scandinavia (where Craggs is of course) were the only places with good weather. Day 1 we picked up a bunch of ‘wet day activity’ leaflets. At the end of the trip we had only used 3 of them and that was because we were tired of visiting beaches! I even managed a great day on Astrall Stroll (see other blog entry) with Mark Glaister.

Lovely campsite as well at Treveague Farm which was recommended to us by Maryn Maltby in this thread.

In order to test drive the new Pokketz guidebooks, I took the family out for a session at Birchen. The crag was as busy as ever but we found a few empty routes on Stoker’s Wall the best of which was Yo-ho Crack - a great beginners and small person’s route since there are no reachy moves and it requires a lot of different techniques. The new Pokketz guide seemed to do the trick nicely. I suspect we might have successfully re-invented the wheel with these books and in a few years we may be producing more of them than full-sized books. Probably ultimately it will be mainly for areas where carrying a book is essential like sea cliffs and mountain routes, but they also seem to be handy for quick trips out to local crags where you just need s quick reminder of what is available. One slight drawback might be that it is easy to put down and forget where you left it. I am not sure whether it is because I have boxes of the books at home, or because I wanted to indulge in a bit of viral marketing, but I accidentally left my copy at the crag.