This last week I’ve been working for Coastal Adventures, on a multi-activity development week, with a bunch of great young people. It’s getting busy now we’re into the ‘summer’, and luckily for us here in Pembrokeshire, the weather has been awesome. Coastal Adventures is a relatively recent addition to the Pembrokeshire outdoor industry, but is run by Martin, who has been in the area for many moons! He loves working with groups not just running… Continue reading

This week I’ve been running a Lead Climbing Course in Pembrokeshire, with Laura and Tony. We have had some mixed weather but on the whole its been lovely and sunny, perfect weather for a Lead Climbing Course in Pembrokeshire! We have visited the fantastic Quartz Gabbro of St Davids Head, the pristine Sandstone of Porth Clais and Porth Y Fynnon, and the less visited crag of Pen Y Cyfwry. All great locations, enabling Laura and… Continue reading

Its been a pretty hectic week here in Pembrokehire, with a couple of days giving technical advice, a trip to London to meet the team I’m taking to the Indian Himalaya in the summer, and lots of general admin! I started out on Monday visiting Newgale Lodge, previously a dedicated outdoor activity centre, now its owned by The Development Company, who as the name suggests run management training, but they also have an excellent variety… Continue reading

Climbing at Sainte Victoire So the last few days of our French road trip we spent Climbing at Sainte Victoire. I found it really hard to find out any info on this area, close to Aix-en-Provence, and the Rockfax guidebook we had detailed very few routes in it, but somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain I recalled knowing it was supposed to be somewhere pretty decent… As we drove up towards Puyloubier, I… Continue reading

Climbing in the Calanques Our next port of call on our French climbing trip was all the way down by the Med, to go climbing in the Calanques. Soaring limestone cliffs above the crystal clear sea below, what more could we ask for? Amazing food by the sea and decent weather, oh OK then! We had decided to stop for a quick hit at Chateauvert on the way down from the Verdon, and the climbing… Continue reading

We’ve been in France for the last few weeks, climbing in the Verdon was definitely one of the highlights! It was a hell of a drive from Pembrokeshire, being over 1000km, but once we were there it was clearly worth it! Being Sophie’s first big climbing trip abroad, we opted to not get drain get into the Verdon gorge itself, and instead spent a few days getting used to climbing in the Verdon on some… Continue reading

Its been a pretty hectic and busy week in Wales, with some time spent in the water and on the rock, in Pembrokeshire and Snowdonia. Busy is good I guess, but I’ve barely had a minute to stop and gather my thoughts! After rushing back from the snowy Brecon Beacons for the wedding of a friend at The Druidstone, I could have done with more than one day off! The start of my busy week… Continue reading

This last week I’ve been over in the Brecon Beacons helping run a Gold DofE training for a lovely school from Ockbrook. We had 2 teams of girls making the long journey over from near Derby. They were well equipped and well prepared (and pre-trained) thanks to Simon, the teacher and school DofE coordinator bringing them over. They arrived at Glyntawe on a sunny day but the weather wasn’t to stay like that! A bit of a baptism of… Continue reading

Over the weekend before last we had an SPA training course running. The 4 candidates were super keen to learn and absorb all the information I could give them, despite the wet conditions on day 1! We stayed inside as long as was practically possible, at the Haverfordwest climbing wall, looking at group belaying and the use of an indoor wall, along with some of the problem solving aspects of the syllabus, but eventually ventured… Continue reading

Sunny Easter Climbing Action! It’s been an early Easter this year, but the weather these last few years seem to have the pattern of being good around this time, so we had some sunny Easter Climbing action! After the usual busy bank holiday, which didn’t really seem busy at all as we ventured to random esoteric crags that most visitors might not even know about, the sun really kicked off big time! Our Sunny Easter… Continue reading