last week
during the October school holidays I flew to France with some climbers from the
TCA youth bouldering squad. Alan Cassidy and Stu Lyle were our coaches and
Fiona Ross and David Moodie were the parent Helpers. We left on Saturday and
flew to France, arriving by about 10 in the morning. As soon as we arrived we
went to our cottage and put everything away, because we got there quite early
we went straight to Elephant rock. We just done a lot of easy climbs and messed
around, we didn't stay for long. Elephant rock was my favourite place as I
enjoyed bouldering there. There was a
load of boulders, Elephant Rock is situated in a forest and I was surprised at
how big the forest was.. it was massive with loads of boulders to try.
When we got back we all had a big game of just
seeing how long we can keep the volleyball in the air for. We counted the
amount of touches we made and the record was about 26 or something like that. Once
we were all back inside we lit a fire in the fireplace with some wood we
collected when we were at elephant. We all sat downstairs talking about famous
climbs and what we wanted to try and I just was going to do a lot of the easier
ones so I could say I climbed a lot as it was my first time there. By the time
we had all discussed the dinner was ready. We had already had a McDonalds for
lunch, so we had made a little drop of pasta with some tomato sauce and a side
of vegetables. There was peppers and tomatoes and other vegetables. We all went
to bed reasonably early because it was a long day and we had an early rise in
the morning. We had a separate cottage for boys and girls, we had dinner and
done everything in the boys cottage so at night all the girls ran back to ours.
We all had showers, checked our phones and went to bed.
Sunday, We
woke up at about 8 and got ready and went round to the boys cottage where we
got our breakfast. I had some bran flakes, an apple and a banana. Then we went
climbing again...
We climbed outdoors and done easy stuff most
days except from on Wednesday where it was really wet and horrible weather. I
mainly climbed grade 5 and a 6B and I was surprised how hard these felt. I
tried a few 7a as well, although never quite managed them.
We climbed
at the indoor climbing gym Karma. Some of us did take harnesses and there was
routes but we all decided to go round and try some boulders. Before we done
anything though we went in the wee cafe type thing and ate our lunch, while we
were there, the French team coach came in and we all said hello. After lunch we
got our shoes and chalk bags on and had a walk around the centre, it was bigger
than I expected it to be. We all went round in little groups and warming up by
doing some easy climbs, and I tried some of the harder ones. Then before we finished
we tried some easy ones again as a cool down. We only climbed indoors for about
an hour and a half because the weather got better and some of the boulders had started
drying off. We all went to a small climbing place where some of the rock was
wet, but luckily most of it was dry or drying off at least. We all tried this circuit
thing. You had to climb up the boulder, down the other side and then the aim was
to not touch the ground or any sand, you have to jump on the rocks to avoid the
ground. The more climbs you done the higher you got. There was 61 to do, but
everyone stopped for a break. We got to about 20 or something like that. Me and
a few others had sore skin so we headed back and played volleyball, the others
that didn't come done the circuit again. once everyone was back down we had a massive
game of volleyball which lasted forever.
My favourite
part of the week was seeing and feeling I had improved in both my performance
and confidence. My favourite boulder was a boulder called "Big Jim"
grade ?, I never got it in the end and must have tried it at least 20 times. I
hope to go back to Font one day and get the tick in the box for this boulder.
Thanks for reading
CC
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