Northumberland - Back to Bowden

After coming back from Font, the lads who couldn't make it decided it would be great to make the most of the weather and head down from Glasgow at 05:30 to Northumberland and asked if I fancied it. Despite the lack of skin left on my finger I decided to tag along and take the rest of the week as rest days to allow for all the font niggles to recover. Plus it was Kev's birthday which meant that I could bring along a massive cake and eat the majority of it!

Great Hat!

After a McDondald's breakfast on the way down we arrived at around 08:30 as the sun was just hitting the crag. We warmed up on the warm up wall and then some more as we started doing some bouldering at the far end of the crag as the sun hit this first. It was great to have the crag to ourselves, and it remained really quiet most of the day until we headed back up the road around 16:00. A fast and quick raid on the county.

As always there was a lot of banter, with Andy wanting to finish off 'the lightbulb'. A 6a which defeated him last time despite the numerous attempts he spent on it, and a massive source of banter for the past year when he fell off anything he did bouldering outside! Thankfully for him he put this demon to rest by making a cool ascent. After a few further sends from Stevie and I we moved to the 6b slab 'Child's Play'. This is a brilliant route I did a few years back when I was living in Dundee and unable to repeat last time I was down. This time I got it and the top felt a lot less scary from what I remember! Andy followed me up but had a look of sheer panic when he reached the break near the top. That looked familiar, too high to not want to come down (and really difficult to reverse) and not wanting to carry on as you get higher. A lot of words of encouragement were shouted and he completed it. Great stuff.

Lightbulb

We climbed a fair few more and on the way out I tried the 7a+ 'His Eminence' which looked great, but was always busy when I was down. Unfortunately I did not complete it but I'm sure I'll be back to give it a fair few goes as it seems an amazing problem if a little high!

 

His Eminence