The Manikia guidebook writers are especially proud of the dozen or so multi-pitch routes that have been established and have given them pride of place at the front of the book. We’d made the beginner mistake of turning in without a plan for the morning, so by the time we’d realised that it was perhaps the only remaining weather window for bagging one of these, it was already mid-morning.

We settled on Bouc et Mystere (a play of words on a French phrase for scapegoat) on sector Bouc in Middle Valley. It’s an impressive chunk of limestone:

There’s space for a couple of cars to park next to the roadside shrine…

… and an obvious cairn at the start of the path. This is well-marked by the ubiquitous red arrows and cairns to start with, and the 25mins approach is seeming feasible. However, the path soon deteriorates into a misery of  one-step-forwards-two-steps-backwards scree, and you already feel you’ve put in a shift by the time you reach the foot of the route.

Our route takes a line up the grey slabs on the left of the photo below, for a couple of pitches, before an easy shoulder to level with the left side of the big cave brings four further pitches up steeper orange rock. Seven pitches in all and around 200m up to 6a+.

It was just noon before we started climbing and we set ourselves a conservative 4pm turn around deadline to start rapping (bearing in mind possible showers at the end of the day; the high propensity of the bushy terrain for rope snags; and the cruddy path).

Helen stormed up the first 4c pitch in fine style…

I took the righthand 5c variant of P2 (you can choose 6c if you’d rather) for some surprisingly steep moves, until the lines rejoin near the first abseil station (these aren’t at the same spots as the stances) where there was a distinct paucity of holds – certainly nothing that you could climb at 5c. It’s thoughtfully bolted though – maybe the grade assumes a bit of A0, and be aware it’s a long 50m pitch (more than the advised 13 draws?)

An easy but slightly chossy pitch 3 up a rib leads to the bottom of a steep orange wall. P4 is tough for 6a (more like 6b?) but good climbing. P5 eases off a bit, trending rightwards (again stiff for 5c).

By now it was about 3:30pm and we obviously weren’t going to reach the top before our self-appointed turnaround time. Moreover, we hadn’t spotted the third rap point (and were three pitches and at least 50m above the second one at the P2 stance) so we decided to take advantage of the situ mailon and abandoned sling at the P5 stance to quit whilst the going was good.

Fab views to the coast from our high point.

Inevitably, the ropes all pulled like a dream and we were down in no time, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good mountain judgement!

The verdict on our one-route sample of the multi-pitch climbing – allow plenty of time, have a bit in hand, and don’t expect “holiday grades” or well-manicured paths. A bit of post-climb web research gave 6b and 6a for P4 & 5 so more in line with our experience. With those provisos – Get on them!

For our final day we headed up to Les Larmes de Sisyphe, one of the more westerly sectors on Lower Valley.

We did so with some trepidation after the previous day’s sandbag 25mins slip-n-slide approach, so were pleasantly surprised to comfortably beat the 25-30mins guidebook time (what a difference a well-made path makes!)

You arrive at the split between the left and central sectors…

… and were just in time to see a couple of Italian guys finishing La Rampa Koutsampla, 6a. This follows a natural if unlikely line up a ramp (who’d have guessed) and is absolutely superb (if a tad stiff at the grade).

The same (good but tough) could be said of Aris Kiri, also 6a.

I managed Café Baklava Tsipuro, 7a, after a brief take to dry a very wet tufa (annoyingly the crux finishes at a great pocket which was brim-full with water, which to add insult to injury then spills out onto the smear you need for the final rock-over).

There are some cracking tufa lines on the central section but mostly 7b to 8b. Maybe worth a play sometime?

To finish off the day we stopped in at All The Universe and Helen did Sirius, 5c, and Gravity, 6a+.

We also bumped into Bob and Ali and got a couple of pics of Ali topping out on one of the rope-stretchers on the left.

After a couple of weeks we finally had to start the journey home and bid farewell to Dragonera Cliffs Camping – without doubt the most welcoming and one of the best value campsites we’ve ever stayed on. Thank you Maria! We’ll be back!