He spoke too soon!!

We both woken in the night (0315 he tells me) to the noise of timber breaking, there was a bit of a dodgy dead looking tree over the track, so I think we both assumed a branch had fallen off. Went back to sleep. He then woke me at 0530 looking out all of the windows as he’s heard a car, and didn’t know what was going on (nice to know he’s more aware of these things when we are isolated and remote). No sign, so we went back to sleep. 0815 we awake to the noise of a chainsaw, so I pack him off to find out what is going on. 

The fallen tree blocking our exit (08:15am)

He’s quickly back, for me I thought, but no, for the camera. The tree we heard in the night was actually a whole tree, that had fallen across our exit drive and across the road,  the car was a workman on his way to work where he arrived and told the boss they had a job to do, he stopped to put cones round the tree. The chainsaw was them doing the job! Just as well we weren’t in a rush, though to be fair they were done in an hour!

The guy in the grey top owns the campsite we were on. For some reason he found it quite amusing and hoped we were not in a rush!

Other uses for a 'stop-go' board

The little van was scared because when we’d stopped to look at the site, we’d just walked up the drive, leaving the van parked by a tree, not that we paid it much attention! We then went through various stages of nervous hysteria – there was no wind last night, why did it fall down, we could have been driving by it, it could have fallen on the van. It might NOT have fallen across the road, in which case no one would have worried about it till we came to leave, to find we couldn’t!

A few more cuts....

Just drop this over here and the jobs done (09:10am). Pity we're not staying another night, there's plenty of firewood now!

It’s just not what you expect to wake up to! Still we finished breakfast and went back to the crag, as B said, the first time he’s ever driven to a crag and the engine not even got warm!

The crag. The face actually goes right down to the bottom of the trees

We had a stunning morning, five climbs in total, finishing with two three star 17’s which we both thought were amongst the best climbs we’ve ever done! Time for lunch, the sun was coming out, it was getting warm, so we decanted back to the nearest town to shop in preparation for Easter, not that we are planning anything special, but just that the shops shut Friday and Sunday. Odd campsite tonight, but I can forgive it anything – there is a small black kitten running about…..!

This is looking straight up the crag. Fantastic layers with great pockets on a vertical face with overhangs. Brilliant!

 

One more picture: this is the toilet and outside sink at the campsite. Not exactly luxury but enough for us (good job no-one else was there)!