A forest of monkeys and some climbing...

With bad weather forcast Rachel and I decided that going to wales for the weekend would just result is us moping around and getting wet, rather than getting some climbing done. Instead we planned to do a few different things, including stuff that could be done regardless of the weather! This saw us getting up and heading towards Stoke with a plan... a plan that involved monkeys.

Instead of bouldering we visited the monkey forest. This is a large woodland area outside Tentham Gardens in Staffordshire where they've got a large population of Barbary Macaques. You'd think that they wouldn't be able to survive in our climate (well I did anyway) but the Macaques actually inhabit the Atlas mountains of Algeria and Morocco. The staff there are extremely knowledgable and actually really easy to talk to. Rach and I learnt loads about the different social structures that were going on within the 2 different groups of monkeys. The park is a little jurassic parky when you enter, with the duel gate system but once you're inside there the monkeys are just free range. Literally like they just wander around and cut you up when you're wailkng past. It is a pretty cool experience.


The monkey forest is still a short experience and this left us with an afternoon to kill. We decided to risk the weather and head to churnet. Rach took me to the Peakstone Inn and showed me the walk in to Wrights Rock from there. It's a much nicer walk than starting at Traveller's Rest, simply because it's reasonably flat rather than slogging it up uphill. The weather was really good all day and I managed a few problems. I actually only completed a 6a+ and 6b, down on the left hand side of the main wall. I then had a crack at Simple Simon. At 7b it's pretty hard, actually harder than I can climb which became apparent after I spent an hour working the problem and had only just managed to grasp the last hold.


I guess somethings are not meant to be, and me climbing 7b when I've had about 2 weeks off any indoor climbing are one of them. The sad thing was though is that I figure if I just train hard on the campus board then I'll get the necessary strenght up and I'll be able to do said problem. 


After what could have been considered failing on simple simon (I considered it a success, as making it to the third hold!), I jumped on Fingers instead. Finger's get 7a, which is a might easier and it's also not a solely power based problem. This is a problem I've tried before and was insipired by a really good picture of someone on it in the new PD bouldering guide. I've gained the decent hold a few times, but then getting my heel involved has always left me with a worried feeling. Although Rachel was there, she refuses to spot me because I'm quite big and there's little she feels she can really do if I fall off. Whether or not to spot someone is the spotters choice, and whether or not to climb a problem without a spotter lies solely with the climber. This is all a debate for another post really. 


I get pretty worried about my ankles, especially when I'm bouldering as they ended up getting a lot of impacts and twisted and turned in all kinds of positions. Regardless of my worry I still manged to actually get my heel on the good hold this time and have enough strenght to make the next move. Considering I didn't think I was going to even make it that far I had to yell to Rach to move my single pad (I was bouldering on a single, hopefully well placed pad) so I wouldn't miss it.


I'd say at the end of my attempts this was another success, but in the same way as the last problem. I'd come very very close to actually reaching the final hold, but with hindsight I should have shorted my hands out to get more reach. I'll do it next time, and I look forward to it!


I pottered around a bit more but that was really then end of my bouldering for that day. The weather had been very kind to us, as it had only really rained once and that was only a light shower. On our walk back to the Peakstone Inn we met "Shiny" Stu Brooks, who could probably be described as Mr Churnet. He seems to spend a lot of his life cleaning, photographing, putting up problems and generally documenting bits of churnet. There's always something new and exciting going on for him in the Valley. Rachel has mentioned him a lot to me before so it was nice to meet him. 


With a lot of rain falling over the weekend various other jobs were completed around the house (putting up shelves, staining things etc) and I had some chance to get to grips with GIMP. GIMP is image editing software, which is also free. Apparently it's very similar to photoshop, but I wouldn't know because I can't use photoshop and wouldn't know where to start. I've been playing around with this GIMP software to edit a few of the images from the weekend. It's getting easier and easier to use and I view it as a pretty much kick-ass version of MS Paint. I've included some of the worked images below for you to enjoy:

Rachel bouldering hard with a B&W background (First attempt)

The really cool stick we found, again with a B&W background

Simple simon (Left) and Fingers (right) and my single pad.