Deep in the heart of exam season, another LUMC club trip is crying out for club leaders for a long weekend away to Cockermouth Scout Hut. With only one exam to go on the Thursday afterwards, I decide that it's acceptable to squeeze in a cheeky weekend of climbing - if you can't do it in May then when can you? At the pre-trip meeting I soon learnt that the trip leads had grouped me into Sam's car on Friday, a plan that I was quite happy with until I learnt that they were leaving at midday (after Sam's exam) and also having to pick up Matt Fleming. The problem was that I'd got keen to enjoy a whole day's climbing during the excellent weather on Friday and a midday departure just wasn't going to cut it; plus the fact that I'd heard rumour of Matt's possessions being spread across various places in Kendal which would have added disruption to delay. Luckily, Kate and Maddie were leaving nice and early at 8am so I shoehorned myself into their car and engr...

At 16 Wyresdale Road, rain was lashing against the window again. The sun had set long ago (current time 5pm), and I can't feel my hands from yet another bone chilling commute home. I haven't even climbed this month, with my last log being a freezing outing to Wolfhole on the 30th November where each toe became a little icicle - all the British rock is too cold, wet, or seepy to do any meaningful climbing in December (and no, bouldering isn't meaningful!). Feeling beyond hope, I pop the kettle on to try and tease some feeling back into my blue hands, but that's when it hits me! I'm off to El Chorro next week!! Of last year's squad, Tom and Chris had "ticked" El Chorro, feeling that they didn't have much to come back for, and Jonathan had to work on his dissertation over Christmas. As a result, only Sam and I were keen to go again this year, with Tom and Chris heading on the Brown family holiday to Siurana instead. Sam is an organisational beast and ...

  Probably the first thing to get out of the way here, right at the beginning, is the whereabouts of Lower Sharpnose Point. It's in England, that much is for sure, but unfortunately (according to the maps) it's also in Cornwall. Now, as a certified Devon fanboy this news did come as a terrible shock, but it's something I'm willing to admit didn't really detract from the experience, and certainly doesn't detract from the climbing. For these five days, I'm climbing with Tom Waddy; probably one of the two people who can really be credited with teaching me to climb. For a very scared and relatively weak climber like me, climbing with Tom was always a bit of a mixed bag - his main strengths of freaky flexibility, deft footwork, and fiddling in good gear don't always translate to encouraging newbies like me up their first leads or taking them tight when seconding a tricky move, but that's okay. As a recently (slightly) more developed climber, I'm start...