That’s Northern England put to bed - well just about! Three years of nagging to get Alan interested and two years of steady work, many trips to ‘the North’ - and we are just about there - its always a great feeling. Of course I have Lofoten to finish off (due out April/May) though that isn’t a huge job as I have been working in parallel on the two book for the last 18 months. Thorbjørn is going to call in some time over the next two weeks to help me sort out my pigeon Norwegian - overall he appears pretty pleased with the way it is looking so far. Then what - well I guess it will be time for a rewrite of Western Grit.

We headed down to the coast, had a walk out to the Cap d”Amont and watched the sunset - glorious - and according to the forecast is set fair for the next ten days.

Colin and Dave Gregory had a reasonable 11 day trip to visit us, seven decent days, in which we got a heap of climbing done, both in the local area and a little further afield, on a fine mixture of granite and limestone cliffs. The weather has been cool and occasionally showery, and views of the big hills to the north have revealed stacks of fresh snow.
Then just as were were fit(-tish) and fired up we got two days near solid rain - probably the wettest spell of weather ever in our many visits down here. Saturday morning I delivered them to Nice airport, and it was still hammering down - the motorway was just like driving in the UK.
By the time we got back to the pad, the sun was out and the forecast is set fair - sorry about that lads!

Colin and Dave Gregory arrive on the first day of the year and we had two busy days on the rock before the rain set in! A couple of damp days gave me chance to crack on with Northern England (not long now!) and check the local Decathlon where I discovered three climbing guides I hadn’t come across before - including one the are right behind the pad. The lads did a bit of local logging to keep the home fires burning.

During a drier spell we tried one of the cliffs, nice red granite, well-bolted and in a sea-side setting - very pleasant. The following day was better again, looks like it is coming good. OK - the weather hasn’t been the best - but I have done almost 30 more routes than I would have if I had stayed in the UK!