Words by Neil Mawson

I finally finished work at the end of October and packed our new van ready to make the long drive to Northern Spain. Our first destination was Margalef, about 40 minutes drive from Siurana. We had planned to stay in Catalunya for the whole seven weeks of our trip. Margalef is Conglomerate which is between 15 and 30 meters high. It is a number of cliffs dotted along the sides of two different valleys near the small village of Margalef. The climbing was powerful, technical and interesting not like some of the sectors at Montsant that are just like climbing a boring ladder made out of pockets in the rock. As neither of us had been before it was great to start there and warm into the climbing by doing lots of the easier routes. In the second week of the trip after recovering from the two day drive down I managed to redpoint a superb 8a+ called El Fustigador which is a really steep technical wall mainly on two finger pockets. 
 
We headed over to Siurana for a few days to get some comfort of a campsite as we were just free camping at Margalef and paying for a shower at the Refugi in town. As we'd been climbing in the shade so far we went to a different sector still at Margalef but in the sun as it started to get cold. I then had one of my best onsighting days ever managing to do two 7a's, 7b, 7c, 7c+, and an 8a! The 8a was called Transilvania, one of the best 8a's I've ever done. The very next day I managed to onsight another 7c and 8a. I managed to redpoint another couple of 8a+'s over the next week getting really close to flashing one. Ruth was also having a good time flashing two 7b+'s one of which was Mandragora at Siurana.
 
After this it got really cold and we headed north to meet up with some friends at a fairly new and unknow cliff called Oliana. This place was hard, one 7a, 1 7a+, two 7b's a 7b+ an 8a then 8b/+ upwards... I got on the 8b/+ and got really close a number of times falling right at the top of the 38 meter barrelling wall. We spent a couple of days over at Terradets where Ruth did Occident (a classic 7c) 2nd go and I did another 8a+ 2nd go.

Disaster, it snowed! It was cloudy for a while as well so we couldn't get any sun either. We retreated back to Margalef for the last week where it was warmer and more sheltered. It turned out that Catalunya was having one of its coldest winters in 50 years!
 
We returned home just before Christmas feeling a little disappointed having not redpointed a hard project. But we have both found routes that we are keen to go back to when its a little warmer as they are on shady crags. Hopefully we plan to head back out in April for a month to get them done.