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

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Rockfax, Climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.