3 Girls, 5 Bags, 1 Rope & a New Seat Ibiza
Some may wonder what happens to all the little instructors when Go Ape shuts it’s doors for winter, well, some of us get winter jobs, some sleep till noon and others go on Adventures!
A few of us from Delamere tend to leave the country for some form of climbing vacation, this time it was a “girls only” trip which means “this isn’t going to go smoothly”. So Clare, Nikki and I (Vikki) take to the airport to begin our adventure to Spain. Falling at the first hurdle we only paid for one baggage up to 20kg. Clare was on 12kg all on her own, we had to get another bag so we could have 40kg between us, we ended on 39.4kg, with our carryon rucksacks rammed as well, I don’t know how we do it, must be a girl thing.
So we’re on our way to Barcelona, a 2 hour flight with a baby screaming it’s lungs out right next to you is not a short flight. Another half an hour in the airport is spent trying to discover where to pick up the rental car – it was outside, what girls do best is to act all helpless and ask men for help, easy.
We have a sat nav, what can go wrong? This is our first trip without a boy driving, everything can go wrong, so immediately we get stuck in a random village, down a dodgy hilly road that’s getting suspiciously muddy and smaller. With Nikki behind the wheel, my head out the right window, Clare’s out the left, “you’re ok this side, right, right, left, right, STOP, I’m going to check what’s around the bend … There’s a boulder in the way”! After reversing up the hill, through bushes and doing a 17 point turn were on our way, you’d think we’d learned our lesson. But 2 minutes later we go down a no entry, where the road narrows into nothing. After an hour of getting stuck down dodgy roads and reversing up hills we’re off, the smell of the clutch burning doesn’t worry me, it’s the scratch on the side of the car that we got from scraping past some barbed wire that concerns me a little (thinking of the £100 deposit we left!)
We haven’t even started climbing yet, but the adventure has already begun, we eventually find the bunkhouse we’re staying in, in the middle of nowhere in La Mussara, after doing about 3 dozen hairpin turns and stalling the diesel car 7 times we make it. Luckily it’s only us and 2 Spanish blokes, as our small room consists of bunk beds 3 high by 5 across, that’s 15 beds, all connected. The electricity is limited, you have 10 seconds once you switch on the light to do what you need to do before your thrown into complete darkness, you have to pay for the showers, the water is milky tasting and it’s freezing at night .
So let’s get to the point of the trip, the climbing. Every day consisted of us getting lost trying to find the crag, we’re used to that, we get lost in England most days. The guidebook says it’s a 10min walk. 40minutes later after crawling through bushes we make it, then locate the real path we should have taken. We find a nice spot, create camp, sprawl our junk over a 15 metre radius and get too it. The routes can go from 8 metres plus basically, this trip we only managed to get to about 33 metres off the ground, we got rained off the day we were planning on doing the big stuff, silly English weather following us. Me and Clare played on grades 5+ to 6b+, Nikki is sort of new to outdoor climbing so she stuck to a few grade 4’s or letting me and Clare set up some top ropes for her. For those who don’t really climb much, Wikipedia says: “Lead Climbing: a specific sub-category of climbing in which the climber uses quickdraws to clip onto permanent bolts in the rock, and thus clips the rope into each quickdraw as she or he climbs up. A quick draw consists of two caribiners attached on each end of a piece of webbing. One caribiner holds the rope and the other caribiner clips into the fixed bolts in the rock.” I’m a big fan of leading, the rope doesn’t get in the way and I feel a bigger sense of achievement when I’ve reached the top. Sometimes though I think the Spaniards forget to put bolts in, one of our most popular sayings is “that bolt’s miles away” whilst were on the verge of tears of the potential height we can fall from … if you fall off, your life is in the hands of your belayer (the person holding the other end of the rope). Clare is my hero when it comes to having my life in her hands.
I’m most scared climbing when I’m on a route that has been used a lot. The guidebook may say its an easy route, ten years later, it’s not anymore, its shiny and well rounded which means you slip all over it, when your 6metres off the floor in decking territory the last thing you need to be worried about is your feet slipping off. This is one of the reasons why I don’t tell my parents what I’m doing.
So the last night we return to Barcelona to experience the city, driving there is insane. There are about 5 lanes across and when you turn people quite happily undertake you in cars, scooters or big huge buses, Nikki did well with all the driving, all though she spent the duration of the trip in third gear. We locate the hotel after forty minutes of going round in circles, we had our first shower in a week and out we go. We mistakably took the side streets, that’s not the best place for 3 British girls on their own to be at night, we got a lot of “ooo la la’s” and offers to buy beer! The Rambles is an interesting place with people making things out of random stuff like cans, cassette tapes, painting things etc and people pretending to be statues it is definitely worth a look. But what does a Brit do on holiday? They find the one English pub in the whole place! So into the ‘Manchester’ bar we go!
The next day, strolling around the city taking in some of the sites whilst eating ice cream, we stuck out like a sore thumb, shorts and t-shirts whilst all the locals are decked out in big coats and scarves, you can tell we don’t experience the sun much. Also they could only manage to get Nikki’s name right, so for the entity of our trip I was known as ‘Bikki’ and Clare was known as ‘Clem’.
On the flight home we slept the best we could, with another screaming baby near by, wishing we had more time. This is just round one to scope out the area, now we know where not to go wrong and how to get to places more easily. Round two will be longer, more insane and won’t involve cheese and lettuce sandwiches for lunch every day.
Want to know how to live life more adventurously? Leave the boys at home!
