2016 BBQ Meet

Post date: Jul 9, 2016 10:31:19 AM

It is a SMC tradition that during the summer there is a BBQ Meet. The location this year was near Mewslade Bay on the Gower and held the weekend June 11-12th.

A few words from trip organiser, Rick:

"Tracy and I had both booked Friday off work in order to arrive early and get some climbing done. We arrived at Port Eynon around mid-day and walked to Boiler slab where I managed to lead three routes and caught a rare sight of the lesser spotted Tracy on the rock face. We then went into the Smugglers Haunt in Port Eynon for a well earned pint and a takeaway pizza. We arrived at the cottage, pizzas in hand, and scoffed them in the sun lounge admiring the view with a Blandford Flyer. Shortly after everyone else started to turn up and once they were all here and picked their beds attention turned to what we were going to do tomorrow. We decided to try an area called Devils Truck at Fall Bay as we had bad tide times and this place had a non-tidal platform.

We all awoke Saturday morning to a dull grey day, and after the maelstrom of eating breakfast and packing gear we all headed to Devils Truck. It’s about a 20 minute walk from the cottage and after a “where the hell is it” moment and much discussion, we found the crag. Lee and Andy D started on up a route each and I decided it would be a good idea to solo above the crag and straddle along The Razor with Andy R in tow. After petrifying myself (and probably Andy) we descended back down to the group and it started to rain so we decided to head back to a little place called Mewslade quarry which is just a big slab that you can boulder on close to the cottage. Whilst everyone was bouldering Javier and myself thought it would be a good idea to explore the caves in the area but after getting to a big drop thought it would probably be best to head back towards the light. Once we had emerged the weather had perked up a lot, so Lee and myself scouted out another location called Catacomb Gully. After we had decided it looked like a suitable location we headed back to the group finding most of them sunbathing and one even asleep! We all grabbed our gear and headed for Catacomb Gully and spent most of the afternoon there. Whilst we were here Emily and Simon had turned up to join us. At around 18:00 a lot of people decided to head back to the cottage and make a start on the BBQ, However Andy D, Simon, Lee, Theresa, and myself thought it would be a good idea to check out King Wall back at Fall Bay as we could probably climb on it now as the tide was out. However the tide was on its way back in and by the time we got to King Wall it was too close to risk it, but as we were on the upper tier at the start of the routes on Lewes Castle, Lee lead up one route and I lead another to get one last climb in. By the time we had got back to the cottage most people were already drinking beer and the BBQ was lit as soon as we turned up. We had quite a banquet with loads of burgers and sausages, salads, kebabs, steaks, Marta’s amazing frittata and my home made BBQ sauce. We had a beautiful evening watching the sunset over the horizon eating brilliant food and drinking beer (my Jägermeister idea didn’t go down too well though!)

Sunday morning and we arose to another dull, drizzly, cloudy day. After a morning of packing and tidying away Pet and Ed thought they would give Devils Truck another go and got a few routes done whilst the rest of the group did a walk to the Worms Head. Meanwhile Tracy and I cleaned the cottage. Once everyone returned we packed the cars and headed home."

(Photo: Pet)

Many thanks to Rick for organising it!