If you go down through Borrowdale towards Seatoller there is a small valley that leads to the foot of Glaramara. At the end of this valley is a large crag known as “Raven Crag Buttress”. On it are several excellent climbs. These climbs are true multipitch routes that wind their way up almost 200m up the side of Glaramara.

Last year me and Paul went and climbed Corvus (Link to it) and had a great time. This year we went to do “Raven Crag Buttress” - it would seem inventive names for routes wasn’t the done thing in the early 1900’s. Enjoyable routes was though. Graded at only a V.diff (link to grades) the route wasn’t that hard with most of the holds being large and obvious. What makes it worth climbing is the whole thing right from when you leave your car to when you eventually return. It is a proper mountain route that requires an hour to walk to and therefore an hour to walk back away from. Being slightly harder than Corvus it doesn’t attract the crowds (that day there were no less than six groups queueing to go up Corvus).

The route is split into four pitches, with the first three being worth climbing, the last one being a simple scramble to the top of the crag. Each pitch is fairly straight forward with you following the lines of least resistance. Pitch three is more interesting though, as the route description hints:

30m. Climb up a groove, and either continue up the groove above, or move left and climb the groove overlooking the gully, until exposed moves up a short corner lead to a large bilberry ledge.

So as you can see, I (as it was my lead) had to climb up a groove, then go up the groove some more (as I don’t like exposed climbing) and then go to the top and find a big ledge to sit on. While eyeing up the way to go it’s pretty hard to ignore a large steep sided gully on your left that goes all the way to the bottom of the crag. It was especially hard for me to ignore as I was sat on the edge of it while Paul sorted out the ends of the rope. Eventually we were sorted and I set off, looking for the most obvious way and soon I was perched on top of a big spike of rock looking confused. To my left was a big smooth overhanging wall, beind me was air, to the right was where I’d just come from and upwards was some slanting rock - slanting rock never slants the right way when needed - suddenly it didn’t feel like a V.Diff any more. I put some gear in the handy cracks by my nose and inched my way up the crag making sure I completely ignored the big yawning chasm to my left. I managed to completely ignore it until a few minutes later I was happily stood on a small ledge. Not the belay ledge, but anything where I can get more than one toe is a great rest spot. I guess it was still V.Diff as there was plenty of protection, it was just rather exposed.

To help with our communication Paul had brought a set of two-way radios with him to save us having to yell up the crag at each other. 239These worked fantastically and I was able to let him know just how bad the midges were on my ledge. He was equally able to let me know how bad the midges were on his ledge too. We never got to say useful things through the radios though as we kept dropping the damn things down the crag. I lost one and it landed on a ledge next to where I’d attached some gear, Paul dropped one on a ledge on the last pitch. While climbing up the last pitch I picked up his radio, clipped it to my waist and carried on climbing. I’d not gone more than two metres before the pissing thing was bouncing its merry way down the crag again. Having no radio now I shouted some obscenities into the air and carried on. The climbing was easy now and I’d just have to come back and get it again. It was a good job the climbing was easy given Paul, unable to find anywhere to attach anchors, was doing a waist belay from over a big bump in the ground. I explained about the radio, left mine with him and started off down the crag again.

Remember the big yawning chasm I was diligently trying to ignore before? The radio was wedged in some heather overhanging the drop. One more bounce and it’d have been in several pieces at the bottom.

On the walk off we had a look at Raven Crag Gully which seemed quite nice, and watched the hoardes still queueing for Corvus.

The valley of St Johns in the Vale winds it way along the bottom of a very steep valley linking Thirlmere and the road to Penrith together. Part way down this in the insanely steep hillside is a huge gorge carved from the rock. This is Sandbed Gill. It’s a huge ‘v’ shaped cleft in the hillside as if someone has swung an axe into the ground. So, given it’s so bleeding obvious, why did we drive past it twice before finding it and then almost go up the wrong river? I may have my Mountain Leader, but it doesn’t teach people how to navigate while driving along twisty roads. Reaching Castle Rock was our hint we’d probably gone wrong.

The other problem was that it contained no water. We expected huge waterfalls and running water, not a dry streambed and a few stagnant pools of green goo. It starts from the road though which is nice - just hop over the barbed-wire fence and off up the rocks.For the first few hundred metres it’s simple scrambling with a fence to negotiate. After that simple introduction the fun begins. The sides tower above and close in, and it doesn’t relent until an hour and a half later you escape its clutches at the top of the hill. I’ve seen places like this before and they’ve scared the crap out of me as I’ve always seen them from the top.

The climbing is excellent typical ghyll scrambing. That means greasy rounded rock, exposed climbing with the potential for really nasty falls into places nobody can get into. Climbing E3 might be technically hard and potentially dangerous, but unroped scrambing on loose rock in a ravine can be more fatal - as the various decomposing sheep corpses demonstrated. One sheep saw fit to decompose in a pool right at the top of a hard climb, and it wasn’t until pulling up on the large boulder at the end that we realised just why it was so sticky and slippy. Suddenly coming eyeball to eyesocket with a dead sheep is quite a surprise, not as surprising as finding a leech suckering its way up your arm though.

Some parts couldn’t be climbed directly and we had to escape up the sides and traverse along the hillside. At the time it was fairly straight forward - the simple climbing mentality of “I have to go this way because it’s the only way” takes over. Grass becomes a valid load bearing substance, loose things get pulled on very carefully and fingers become primed for the next hold. Once on safe ground it’s quite amazing at what someone clueless will totter around on quite happily without a care. It’s not that we don’t realise what we’re doing it’s more that by ignoring the obvious danger of falling off the task of staying attached becomes easier. Climbing’s all in your head - think about falling off and it probably will. Anyone can stand at the edge of a kerb with their toes poking over and not fall onto the road, so anyone can stand at the top of a 70m crag with their toes poking over the edge and not fall. The only difference is the height.

The top was interesting. Most ghylls gradually fade into the hillside and become swamp. This one ends in a small network of mini streams and then steep hillside. To get down there’s two options - go the direct route and fall down the crags around the sides of the ghyll, or walk right around the top of the hill to a large grassy bank. The long way has an exposed traverse across the top of a gully that now we know it exists, would make a good way off.

I can’t work out why I like ghyll scrambing. I think it’s the feeling of adventure. With a rock climb it’s either obvious where to go, or the guidebook will explain where the pitches go. In a ghyll I’m free to decide my own route, making it as hard or easy as I feel, getting wet or staying dry. Since I choose my own route, I’m never in a position of suddenly looking down and going “oh cack, how did I get here?”. I do like rock climbing, but again it needs to be more than wrenching myself up a hard route that I can see from the ground.

If you come to the Lake District and walk around in Borrowdale eventually the smell of garlic will waft through the air. It’s quite pleasant, the wild garlic plants cover quite a lot of ground and have nice white or blue flowers.

Unfortunately they also spread quite easily and clog our gardens up. Today I had the suspect fun of using a strimmer to remove the wild garlic covering our gardens here at the Centre.

Strimmers are fun, scything down lots of greenery is also fun. What isn’t fun is when the shredded pieces of garlic plant stuck to my arms, legs and face. The stones being thrown up by the strimmer were also quite painful. Nothing compared to the mashed plant that was being gently but persistently stuck to my clothing and skin.

I’ve washed it off me, but my clothes stink, my room smells and it’s started going down the corridor too!

I guess I’m fortunate there wasn’t any dog crap lying around!

… and get dragged by it.

Simon, one of the instructors here has a 12 metre-square power kite. It’s so large the operator needs to wear a harness and be physically attached to it. There is a safety release, but that was broken.

Oh the fun we had. I’d flown a kite like this before, so knew what to expect - although the kite I last flew was only 3 and a half metres, but still had enough power to drag me around. It’s just the way after being dragged, the kite falls to the ground, another gust comes and it takes off again.

When I’ve updated my website code I’ll start adding pictures to my postings.

A huge storm has just finished blowing over us. All day the weather has been exceptionally hot, sunny, hazy and strangely windy. The kind of weather that makes people tired, sticky and want to go to sleep - or, if you’re English, to strip off and expose white flesh to the elements. I came outside this evening to a black sky and the most spectacular light show going on up in the clouds. The electrical imbalance in the sky was being discharged as giant swathes of sheet lightning and, when it got too near the tops of the mountains, real lightning. Naturally, armed with my camera I have lots of images of just after a particularly good show - i.e blackness. Photographing random events requires some kind of skill I don’t have it would seem.

The air was so hot that when the storm passed over us, emptying quite a lot of rain onto my head I felt like I was stood in a warm shower. I stayed out for a good five minutes getting wet watching the sky completely failing to capture any of it on my camera, but by the time I went in I was dry again it was that warm. It was quite a novel experience being rained on with warm rain, much more agreeable than the usual icy cold stuff that tries to strip skin off. Big fat raindrops that splash when they land and soak to the skin.

The air is now cleaner, fresher and feels somehow thinner. It’s not like it was this morning where you had to force your way through the hot stickyness. It’ll save me having to water the newly sprouted grass I sowed earlier last week.

Of course, while watching a particularly intense bit of the X-Files my room was plunged into total blackness. The timing of the powercut couldn’t have been more precise.

Wow, it’s a bit of a shock to the system this training stuff. After spending the winter standing up and occasionally dangling off Keswick climbing wall it’s a big change working here again. Either we’re scrambling around crags or up in trees at the high ropes course, or we’re being flushed down the ghyll on our backsides. I know how to do all of this, so my main function in the training was to be a guinea pig to “demonstrate” what to do.

I have to admit I did derive a small amount of pleasure watching the new people having their first dip in the ghyll The weather is warming up so there’s now a noticeable temperature difference between ghyll water and the air. I don’t know what’s going on with my fingers and toes, but after just a few minutes of being in cold water they go totally white and numb. The rest of me can be perfectly warm but my hands and feet just shut down. Normally if there’s warmth in your body it flows out to the extremities and everything stays warm. Some neoprene socks help, but after three hours of submersion I’m back to walking on blocks of ice.

It’s really strange when things thaw out too. The soft bits of my feet recover quite quickly, but the soles take a long time, so long that they can be numb and it feels like I’m walking on three blobs of rubber. Presumably this is because the inside of my feet can feel the soles pressing on them, rather than the whole thing working together. I hope the summer is warm, I’m done with feeling cold.

There’s some nasty flu-like thing going around at the moment. It’s been through three of us and I think it’s currently trying to make a home in my tonsils. I’ve got a slightly sore throat and feel quite tired. Then again it could just be a normal cold, and the tiredness could be from the past two weeks.

Went bouldering at the Bowderstone last night. I need to find some finger strength from somewhere as I know where to put my hands, I just can’t make them stay there.

Oh, and I finally managed to get the Wifi password this place has enabled. If it’s still working I’ll put these entries online. WPA is quite temperamental at best.

The new people have arrived. We took them down the ghyll today to show them how to run it. We’ll be taking them down the ghyll quite a lot so they can understand how to run it safely and what to do. As it’s the first time they’ve done it (except on the interview weekend) they’ve not yet made the transition from cold wonderment at the experience to someone who looks in charge. This was exactly the same when I was doing it this time last year. For the first few goes it’s really confusing, cold and noisy. After a while it just becomes cold and noisy.

No! I don’t! I’ve finished. No more moronic customer questions We went out for a meal last night in one of the local pubs. I had a monster sized cow pie which was about the size of a DVD case, but as thick as a stack of five. Naturally it all fitted inside me, have to get my energy up for the season ahead you know

Am now home for the week as I have a dental appointment on Thursday.

It’s quite strange, parts of my brain haven’t quite worked out I’m not going back to the shop, it feels like I’ve been there forever. Mind you, this tends to happen whenever I do anything for a long time.

Three more days at the shop then I’m finished. Now where did I leave my brain again?

Car’s being wheeled off to the fixit man on Sunday. The odd noises happen in 1st gear, 2nd when I do 25, 3rd when I do 35, 4th when I do 45 and in 5th gear 55MPH. Strange pattern there! Hopefully it’s something that’s obviously broken, can be repaired and is cheap to repair. Can’t stand it when something’s broken and nobody knows why - I’ve been the person trying to diagnose random problems and I’ve also been the person reporting the random problems. You tend to get told to go away until it breaks, then bring the pieces back. I’d just rather my transmission doesn’t fall out the bottom of my car while going down the motorway.

Two weeks ago I snapped the chain on my bike. Today I finally got around to fixing it.

Before I could do anything there was the small task of cleaning the chain and removing one very broken link. Chain tools make this job much easier than it would otherwise be, but it’s still not that simple as a look in the bin in our bike shed will show you. The books and diagrams on chain repair kits make it look incredibly straight forward. I’d like to see it done with a manky oily chain that’s been wiped down with a rag, on a cold day done by someone wearing latex gloves that are covered in oil.

Once the chain was rejoined the laborious task of re-indexing the gears began. God this is a time consuming task involving resetting the fine balance between being able to stay in a gear while also being able to change to another gear. The bike does change gear now, although it won’t go into the highest gear as that just results in the chain trying its best to hop off all the time. I suspect the cable needs retensioning again. I’ll leave that for a warmer day.