Baggy, beer, and tapas!

Post date: Apr 25, 2015 12:10:06 PM

It seemed that the Club members had much better offers for Easter, as only a potential five people were up for a weekend in North Devon. As it turned out, two of these had to pull out at the last moment, one on the drive down!!! The remaining three, Chris, Ed & Petrina, then took slightly different itineraries.

Chris headed down Good Friday to a blustery and rainy campsite at Incledon Farm in Georgham, with his cousin & their fiancée, then spent Saturday road biking with them. Ed & Petrina, on the other hand, headed down on Easter Saturday (to avoid camping in the wind & rain!) and, despite setting off in grey drizzly conditions, arrived in wall-to-wall sunshine!

After setting up camp and a spot of lunch, Ed & Petrina tried to climb at Scattling Zawn at Baggy Point where there are several easy climbs with no bird restrictions. However, after a lot of wandering about trying to find the cliff, and then trying to find the way to the abseil point, they had wasted so much time that they became concerned about the tide turning (low tide had been at 1 pm) given the only way in to the start of the routes was by abseil. The hasty back-up plan was to head into Croyde for an ice cream... but they even failed to manage this, settling instead for beer and tapas!!! [sounds like good fortune to me! - Steve]

Easter Sunday was much more successful (despite a late start to obtain some Factor 50!) with everyone climbing on the Promontory slab at Baggy Point. Chris led Ben (S 4a ***) and In Her Eyes (S 4a *) with Ed & Petrina seconding. Afterwards everyone headed off for more beer and tapas.

On the Bank Holiday Monday the group decided to head inland, away from the crowds, and to avoid tide issues, and ended up at Hounds Tor on Dartmoor. Here Ed lead Paddy (M **) and Chris lead Pulpit (HVD *) & Devonleigh (HVD **) on the Pulpit Block, with Petrina seconding all routes.

The granite of the tor made for a very different experience and required some extra thought with regards to protection. The downclimbs were also arguably harder than some of the routes up!!! But it was another lovely sunny day which meant no one headed for home until around 6 pm.

Petrina