Pages

Sunday 16 September 2018

Fontainebleau Diary 2018 - Part 1

I'm conscious of the fact I haven't updated this in quite some time; I started writing about running and climbing to give myself something to focus on and at the start of this year I made the decision to run for fun not for targets. Part of that fun was letting go of obsession with statistics, training plans and whatever else which led to a more relaxed view on documenting them too. I've run a few races this year and am keeping up with it, just not pushing speed, distance and training plans. Maybe there will be a retrospective of the year at some point.

 Anyway, this is a climbing update. September always marks the annual group trip to the iconic forest of Fontainebleau, the home of bouldering, to spend a week in the forest with bread, cheese and rocks. This year it was the earliest we have been for various logistical reasons, and on Friday 31st August we converged on The Norman Guesthouse in Dover for the 3rd year in a row, where Laz remembered us (if not our names) and we found a delightful micropub in The Lanes to refresh ourselves before heading for a curry at The Virsa. Saturday morning saw Laz treat us to breakfast before it was time for the ferry and we were on our way.


After a long and rather warm drive south through France we arrived at Gîte La Rochetine on the outskirts of Noisy-sur-École - ideally located for the Trois Pignon area.  Once settled in went for a 6km run in the forest to stretch our legs after the drive before settling down to a dinner of pasta and a glass of wine.

So, Sunday and time to climb. We decided to go for an area we had not tried before in La Ségognole where we met up with two of Kelly's climbing partners of old, Jim and Lolly, who had made the trip down from Bristol a few days before us and were staying in their vans. Historically the first day has been a day of getting carried away and climbing a whole load of problems at a relatively easy grade, but this year I decided I wanted to try a little bit harder and set my eyes on problems in the Red Circuits and/or Font 5 difficulty. I ended up getting 13 Yellow and 13 Orange problems - yellows being mostly Font 2 or 3 and Oranges Font 3 or 4 - but I was also really happy to pick off Calvaire from the Red circuit, a crimpy arete climb coming in at Font 5; what a great start to the day!  I also decided that this was the perfect place to do a bit of lunchtime yoga, with a Tree in the Forest


The second day of climbing saw us return to Canche aux Merciers, a location we last went in 2015 which was my first trip to Font. That year I climbed Yellows and Oranges, and one Blue (the Blue circuit at Canche is mostly 4s and 5s). This year I got 11 yellows and then knocked out 8 blues - definitely demonstrating my climbing progress in 3 years. 3 of these were rated 5-, but enough time has passed that I can't remember any specifics.  So that's two days down, and doing really well on my target of pushing myself to climb things which stretch me a bit.  Oh, and two days of lazing in the sun eating lunch too :D



No comments:

Post a Comment