SPAIN

Hi Everyone,

I'm back in Wales sitting here like it was all a dream. I can't believe that yesterday morning I was climbing a crag in south spain in a tank top and shorts looking out over the Mediterranean. What a week! I really didn't want to come back. I could have spent three more weeks there doing exactly the same thing everday: wake up, eat breakfast while watching a climbing movie, a quick trip to the supermarket for bread for lunch, climbing by 10:00am, quick break for lunch, leave crag at 5:00pm, back to the hostel, make dinner, eat, play a quick board game or two, then sleep. Every day. It was beautiful.

Can you see me? Kinda tiny at the top... I'm leading here which, contrary to top roping is just a little more dangerous and scary... and fun!

There were seven of us; three girls, three boys, and Simon. Simon was our 'staff' member but really he was like a big brother. The whole group worked together really well and even after a week of being together for a week, we'd yet to get tired of it. The hostel we stayed at was called The Orange House and caters primarly to climbers. So we were completely surrounded by the climbing atmosphere 24 hours a day. The website to this great place is http://www.theorangehouse.net/ and I highly reccommend it if you want some really amazing climbing. Also just check out the pictures and get some idea of how beautiful the area is.

The weather was really good. We had a couple extrememly warm days where we were all wearing practically nothing under our harnesses (lots of sunscreen though we still all got quite a nice tan) and then there were some days when the clouds came in or the wind blew a bit and things cooled off quite a lot. But even with the jackets it was dry and beautiful.

Nice weather huh? ... this was justwaiting around in the sun for people to climb up to a particularly beautiful crag called Toix.

My birthday was Thursday and again, like last year in Vienna, I had the most incredible time. It was really just another day but it was another day climbing in Spain! When I reached the top of my first climb that morning, my belayer wouldn't let me down until they'd all sang a round of Happy Birthday and that night we had balloons and a nice meal and cake with too much whip cream... it was all really memorable.

The climbing itself was amazing. We all started on quite easy climbs seeing as most of us had never been climbing outdoors before and had only done climbing in indoor climbing gyms. It's a much different and much better expereince! And by the end of the week we'd all pushed our levels and were climbing much higher rankings. It was really nice to see the improvement. I was a bit sore after the first couple days but after that it all felt really good.

I've fallen in love with the sport and hope to continue in the future. There's apparently a lot of oppertunity around Taos even if you don't have all your own expensive equipment. So we'll see!

Me belaying... kinda. This was a tricky traverse we did which started with a climb up and out of a cave. I'm holiding a support rope though the actual belaying is being done from above.

I'll put more pictures up later because they are all on the other's cameras. So keep checking in!
xx