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Lucy's French Diary - Spring 2007

by Lucy Creamer

Well, I've now been in France for nearly four months and I have to say it’s been everything I’d dreamt of. I’d already been here a couple of times on cragging trips and completely fallen in love the area. There is tonnes of climbing here and also one of the best crags in the world- St. Leger.

The weather- which was one of my main reasons for getting out of the UK for the Winter- has generally been fantastic. Tim and I had visions of traveling further afield when it got too cold here, maybe S.Italy etc but to be honest we haven’t had to trek off anywhere. We’ve just been getting to know all the crags round here. Also, as I’m so used to training indoors over the Winter, I was a bit worried that we didn’t have a wall within miles of us but again it hasn’t even crossed my mind to go indoors. The weather has been mild (24`c at the crag on xmas day!) and very dry.

Tim Glasby (c)

Slightly frustrating though, we’ve been having all this good weather and I’m out here looking at my dream routes, which have been bone dery but I haven’t been able to climb them. After recovering from my finger injury which I got last Summer, I did a couple of things at Raven Tor (Boot Boys- f8a+ and Ben’s Roof- font7c+) in the Autumn that I was pleased with and meant I was back on track. So heading out to France, I was optimistic that I was going to be able to get on something hard and hopefully climb a new grade for me. Well it hasn’t happened yet. My climbing took an inexplicable nose dive when got here and only now do I feel that I am on my way up again. So as I say very frustrating, as I am normally fairly consistant but we all
have ups and downs and this just seems to have been a big down cycle. But it’s meant I’ve been mountain biking a lot which I really love and living the life out here so I can’t really complain!

So now Spring is here. I’m feeling more positive about my climbing, I’ve done some good onsights recently, so I am going to get a long term project
that I hope I’ll finish before heading back to the UK- something ground breaking for me.

I’ve also been tinkering away on a new boulder problem. It’s on a cute little crag by a river (great for picnics) and suits me down to the ground. It’s a traverse and I just worked out the finish for it yesterday, which makes it 40 moves long! I’m not sure how hard it is yet, as I’ve never bouldered anything like this before but it feels like it could be font8a, we’ll see…

Today (4th April) is a rest day today, fortunately it’s coincided with some rain. Yes it does rain out here but never seems to alst too long. So I’ll sign off now and go and do the stretching I’ve been putting off!

Cheers Lucy.