More ice adventures

Resting is so boring, I hate being injured. So we headed off into the mountains for some intense ice climbing physio.

Ice Climbing Ecrins

A visit from a pal in the UK was a great excuse to get out ice climbing. Well it's not skiing, so am sure the knee will be fine, much less likely to fall over and hurt myself. I didn't realise that skiing would be more hazardous to my well being than the climbing. Natalie and I had a fantastic few days out on the ice, her first time. I've got the bug now, couldn't stop smiling all the way up each route. I LOVE IT!

Ski update

It was all going so well, getting more confident, loving the slopes. Then I fell over and twisted my knee in some nasty position and after a short visit to a dishy doctor at the local hospital it turns out I have hurt a ligament!! Three weeks rest with no harsh activity... i wonder if ice climbing counts? Perhaps it's just skiing!

My first winter

The snow has arrived and it now appears that I live in a ski resort. So I thought I had better learn to ski. I had an excellent lesson from a local friend and ski guide who helped point me in the right direction. Check out www.eurekaski.com I couldn't recommend a better instructor than Gavin. So armed with some basic technique I hit the slopes hard - quite literally!!

Binge blogging

So I'm guilty, I haven't updated the blog for ages...here it all comes at once.

Dry tooling in our backyard

Another stroke of luck on a rare bad weather day, out walking, we saw a couple of people dry tooling just below our house! So we headed down there to check it out, awesome but too hard for our cumulative experience of 2 days dry tooling at M7. Luckily we made some pals with two local French climbers who kindly put a rope up for us to play. We love it! Visiting La Grave soon to tick some of the easier M4-6 routes.

Italian footballers and handling strikes

It is starting to get super cold and snowy here so I was very much looking forward to a few days cragging with my pal Adam in sunny Spain. Got to airport and checked in at 10am, super excited.
At the boarding gate café I was suddenly inundated with male attention from the Juventus football team, flying out for their champions league efforts. Apparently the best goalkeeper in the world (Gianluigi Buffon) offered to buy me coffee. I kindly declined and got stuck into my book ready to board.
Then it all went pear shaped…no sigbn of my flight and I was told to go back out through security. Well after 8 hours in the airport, quite a few glasses of vino with some new friends from the UK and Madrid all flights were cancelled due to handling strikes so no climbing by the beach for me. I would be gutted if I didn’t love my new home so much.

Great scrapheap in the sky

Returning from the Ardeche my trusty Punto was groaning a bit, we put it down to the excellent Italian build quality and drove on. Halfway home it finally died, gear box pouring out oil all over the road. Luckily we had a few days AA Europe membership left and they sorted us out. We were towed to a local garage within the hour, a pizza van was on hand outside (fantastic as we were starving and dreaming of pizza that evening), and a taxi was called to drive us over 100kms home. Definitely team lucky but not the Punto though. It will soon be relegated to the great scrapheap in the sky!

The perfect place

We thought we’d found the perfect place for our first yoga and climbing retreat in the Ardeche but after a strange phone call we discovered it was only for rent at weekends. A few weeks earlier we found this amazing gritstone crag in the woods looking over a fantastic old chateau and after an internet search for new venues… it came up!! It is absolutely amazing inside, truly the perfect place for our clients to practice yoga, chill out and experience climbing in the garden crag. Full steam ahead with the new business…

Cragging at home in Briancon