Live from Sheffield

So, I'm safely set up in my new location for the forthcoming 9 months and after surviving over 6 weeks without any climbing (due to a wrist injury) I've been slowly working my way back up to full capacity once again. Well, I was until this weekend at least where temptation eventually won over and started climbing everyday that is :)

The top picture pretty much says it all - my skin is non-existent, and that was before starting off on gritstone. So, a week after the above incident happened and I still haven't recovered - the people who invited me climbing......when are we going again?! to say my motivation is back, is an understatement....

So, in the past week and a half, I've been checking out some of the local areas, both outdoors and indoors (partly to reduce my mileage in the car, and I'll get more out of the indoor wall sometimes). So far, The Roaches (see above photo :), Raven Tor (wow......!!!!!! - a few projects already found but looks like I might be too late in season), Climbing Works (Jeebus, it's frickin' huge! and the system board is eye-opening), the Foundry (great route-setting and almost seems like a better wall for pure training?!?!? probably Moffatt's influence :) and Burbage (again, see above photo for an idea of it's influence).

Initial impressions? There is a serious quantity of people climbing at a very high level here (one guy described himself as a punter by 'only' bouldering Font 7c :) which will be interesting to see whether there's all the elitist issues that go with that or not. But on a way more positive note, there's loads and loads of super-motivated people, and they're all willing to share/introduce/motivate/psyche/travel so it's pretty good so far. Definitely missing some people and some of the fun things from Ireland but there's other things that off-set it too. To top that off, the fingerboard in our house has only got rungs that are one-joint or smaller which gives an idea of potential personal progression or injury while here....hmmmm......trying to avoid it currently but not succeeding (especially after buying my copy of Progression!).


The new local training venue, 10 mins walk from my front door


Gareth showing how it's done on one of those slopery gritstone problems (7a+ or something)