Verdon
Despite a dodgy forecast we headed to La Palud, the heart of Verdon climbing. The deciding factor was the opportunity of some good company with Jim and Jane Burton, not […]
Author Archives: Dominic
Heading towards Verdon
Two words have featured disproportionately in these blogs over the last month: zigzags and charming. Well, we zigzagged over from the Vesubie valley to Saint Auban ( a few extra […]
Col de Fenestre
A gorgeous day, and having exhausted all of the nearby quality crags – or rather been exhausted by them, we decided to explore the mountains. The 5 mile, 2000ft walk […]
Roquebilliere
A crag called Rock-a-Billy, what’s not to like? This is an impressive lump of rock, almost reminiscent of the Devil’s Tower (okay, not the same scale and no hexagonal columns, […]
The Devil’s Arse
The crag turned out to be quite steep, quite impressive, and quite sandbaggy! Never mind the Devil’s Arse – mine certainly got a good kicking! Actually, I wimped out before […]
Saint Martin Vesubie
A change of scene and yet more zigzags, as we head up into the Alps Maratimes proper. The Vesubie gorge makes for a spectacular drive and brought us to an […]
More Peillon
Another trek up the zigzags to visit a different sector of Peillon. This time a 30 min yump over a wooded hillside covered with vivid pink flowering bushes and teeming […]
Gorbio
Equally cute – perhaps even more so, is the village of Gorbio. This is actually signposted off the A8 autoroute as a Village Perche, and indeed it does occupy an […]
Peillon
Just in land from Monaco is the charming ancient village of Peillon. There’s some great climbing to be had around the village and we were delighted to find a charming […]
Santa Lucia
The very pretty Santa Lucia sector above Toraino gets a great write up in the guide. To be honest, it’s a bit too grey and slabby for our current tastes. […]
Erboristeria
This is the dark, gloomy north facing crag that dominates the entrance to the valley – very reminiscent of a shady Malham. We’d avoided it on our previous two visits, […]
Castelbianco
The original crag of the Val Pennavaire, Castelbianco has an old (ok, only 20 years, but that’s ancient in these parts) sector of very steep routes – entry grade is […]
Back in Italy
…yes, I know we said we were going to France, but somehow our random walk has taken us via Italy, and specifically the climbing in Liguria. There’s actually some logic […]
Martinswand
We’d only planned on staying a day in Alsace, but the setting is gorgeous and the weather has been fab, so we decided to stay another night and make a […]
Alsace
As a change from our routine of a stop in Burgundy on the way south we decided to sample the climbing in another famous wine region – Alsace. We found […]
Back on the road
The van is FINALLY fixed – long story, but how can DHL take 2 weeks to deliver a new door from Manchester to Stockport! Aaaaargh! Anyway, just a 2 hour […]
Santa Linya
For our final “airport” day we make a shortish drive to Santa Linya, and enjoy some of the steep juggy routes on sector football, a favourite of Helen and mine. […]
More pudding please!
The French call the conglomerate rock of Riglos “poudinage” – after the similarities with a lumpy fruit pudding. For our second helping we head over to Le Pison for the […]
Fiesta de Los Biceps
Rightly celebrated as one of the best routes in Europe, if not the world, I’d climbed Fiesta de Los Biceps about 6 years ago with Bill. At the time, Jake […]
The reason I don’t do rest days
My self-appointed coach announced that Day 4 of the trip was a rest day. He’s probably right, but it just seems ungrateful not to be climbing when there’s this much […]
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