A slow week for ice creams.....

Waiting for the rush at South Stack

It has once again been a mulled wine weather week in the north of wales. Undeterred me and Rich headed to Gogarth on thursday for some sunshine. There was very little sunshine but to make up for it there was a whole lot of wind.......
For once we had Castell Helen to ourselves and headed down to do Kalihari. I had never looked into that area before but its quite a cool/intimidating place. We warmed up up Atlantis and then due to intimidation/ tiredness/ complete lack of time management on my part thought better of it and headed up True Moments/Freebird.

Crag hits woman in face

This was an uneventful, enjoyable experience apart from a cam levering a rock off into my face halfway along the traverse. Must not look at gear when testing it....

Next up was Tremadog Saturday with Ruth, who was once again about the multisport action, combining festival number 6 with a days climbing. It was a momentous day for Ruth as she had apparently spent 10 years trying to locate Stromboli buttress and we finally managed it!

Where could it be?

Once reached, we climbed Stromboli which was an ace example of Tremadog tecchy 3D weirdness, featuring an entertaining V chimney. We then totally failed to find Helsinki wall, but if it takes 10 years to find a crag then you can't expect to find all the routes on your first visit.

Ruth emerges from the jaws of the chimney

So we walked all the way round to Pant I Fan. I have somehow developed an affection for chimneys, even though I'm no good at climbing them and had my heart set on Strapiombo, but Ruth sensibly opted for Falcon, possibly the loveliest of all Tremadog E1/2s and we did that instead. (But I will be back....).

The next day was my team triathalon debut, as the swimmer for the Test Tube Triathaletes in the anglesey sandman. Having woken up with the world's dodgiest knee, I was not psyched to hear they had moved the swim due to poor conditions and we would have to run there and back. However, after a bit of self-physio, stretching and giving my knee a good talking to I was back on form and away to the swim. This was one of the weirder things I have done, the waves and chop were pretty big and there were about 200 swimmers entering the water. It was like swimming in a super-pod of uncoordinated dolphins, without being able to communicate ultrasonically you were doomed to crash into your fellow swimmers, significantly slowing progress. Anyway, I made it and then discovered my niche in this sport. My swimming had been fairly average but running in a wetsuit - this is my sport! I overtook about 50 people and arrived at the transition area like a packet of boil-in-the-bag rice.



Orca. Like a whale..... Thanks to Robbie for the picture and Rob for the wetsuit

Despite the howling wind, driving rain and continous repeatitions of 'We're live, we're racing' from the commentary booth it was a fun and sociable day. I am extremely grateful to Chloe and Johnny for letting me use their base camp van and to John and Ffion for our fab performance! Maybe one day I will learn to cycle and really get into this sort of stuff!

Top weekend was topped off with a chilled, slightly limpy run over Moel Elio with Brian (amazingly the stern talking to was all the knee needed!), and then a mission planning session with OMM running partner, Glasgow superphysio Jenny. The OMM is once again scarily close, better get running (and dust off the compass again?)!