Ennervation

A bit of a slack couple of weeks mainly due to the increasing heat and humidity. Most activity has been on the bike and I've managed nine out of the last ten days to bike in to work so feeling quite smug about that.

It was our wedding anniversary last weekend so that took a day out, though Cath wasn't too well as it happened. We ended up having a drive round the Dales with lunch at the Tan Hill Inn in very strong wind which was blowing food around and off our plates! To be honest the food wasn't special and it felt that the inn was trading on its location rather than making any effort.

This weekend I got a long bike ride in - had a good average speed for the first 61Km then I picked the biggest hill to get home and things slowed down dramatically. Sunday was spent over in the Lakes climbing on some of the recently developed crags on Harter Fell. We'd originally intended to go to Stonestar Crag but on approaching it peregrines started crying out so even though we knew there wasn't a ban on the crag - the birds didn't nest there this year - we decided to go elsewhere.

The main problem was that we didn't have any descriptions to the routes! In general we got the grades about right though the line that we thought might be a steep E1 turned out to be E4 - we didn't actually try it though. The climbing was OK but it's fair to say that we won't be rushing back. We eventually ended up back at Stonestar to check out the birds. They were making lots of noise without us even leaving the car so we reckoned they were juveniles and there was no reason not to climb. Thus Simon got his third new crag of the day with an ascent of Columbia, E1. A quick pint in Broughton then a surprisingly quiet A65 back home.