Seynes

We are now in Provence. We are camped quite near to the Seynes, where there is a extensive stretch of cliffs famous for the many long tufas and other wierd rock fomations. There are some really hard routes here! It also faces directly south so gets the sun all day - and it's been so hot that it only gets pleasantly cool after the sun has set. Even so we have done bits and pieces here. Iain has found an 8a at nearby crag Pont St Nicolas which being short, bouldery and in the shade after 3 has made it an interesting proposition for him so I'm sure we'll be back there.

Other news this week is the exhaust fell off the car, down a remote single track road after dark.... we are now really really glad we got that european breakdown cover! So we are stuck here for a while until it has been fixed......


We're not able to edit these pictures so hopefully they are not too big to open.

St Leger de Ventoux

Despite having plenty of fun and games in Orpierre we decided to check out St Leger, an awesome sounding crag about an hour and a half's drive west into Provence. Definitely not disappointed! A stunning valley with cliffs running either sides. The biggest bonus being that one side is facing north so there is always some shade (something of a necessity at the moment). One downside is some rather sporting bolting in places. Iain found this out on a particularly tricky 7b+ when he narrowly avoided decking out from about 10m up. A venue where a clip stick is a big bonus...
St Leger is at the foot of Mont Ventoux which rises almost 2000 metres out of the plains of Provence. In the first picture you can see the summit buildings on the right.

Views around Orpierre

Orpierre (still)

Two weeks on and we're still in Orpierre. It is just all a little bit too nice to leave... it seemed like quite a small area but we have found plenty of different climbing areas to keep us going. The weather has been hot and sunny most days (apart from a bad couple of days last week with non-stop torrential rain). The repair to the roof of the tent held out however Iain decided to liven up the game by making a new rip in the top of the flysheet as the rain was pouring down....

Here are some more pics of the valley and some of our adventures... as you can see we finally got around to a little bit of multi-pitch, on a huge blade of rock called Ascle high above the valley. The big wall shown below is the Belleric Wall which has lots of excellent vertical and slabby routes on. The picture of Iain climbing is in the Chateua area on a 7c called Restes Avec Moi. Apparently it has a rather scary and run-out section to the top and this is still a project!

Friends in the campsite

Thanks to those who have left messages. Franco, you would not in fact have liked it in Presles very much. Here's a picture of the very nice campsite and some of the slimier residents. We had to move our tent after the first couple of nights after the ring of salt failed to work. This slug we found under the tent when we packed up after lots of his friends had gone squish under sandals in the dark....

Orpierre

After a picturesque and exciting drive through the mountains we are now at Orpierre, a small village in the haute alpes region. Orpierre is an old mining village which seems to exist only due to climbing these days - it consists of two food shops, a climbing shop and a climbers' bar, and a four star campsite (with a one star climbers' area) which dwarfs the village below. The climbing is therefore very accessible as all the crags are nicely sign-posted from the village and all within ten to twenty minutes walk.

This would be a really good spot if you were looking for a low grade sports climbing area as there is loads in the 5s and 6s from single pitch to 8 pitches and the rock is mostly good quality. There's also probably enough in the harder grades to keep you busy for a while.

On the second day here we ran into Katy and Joe, friends of Jacqui and Dave (and we think we did once meet in Northumberland years ago....) They are here with cousins and their 7 month old baby Samuel and have very nicely fed us for two nights!

Have not taken many pictures here but here I am on the Belleric wall above the village.


By the way have now managed to download the other pictures from Presles so the Presles continued post has been updated below....

Presles (again)

We are leaving here tomorrow (Sunday) to head for Orpierre, which is a bit further south, near to Sisteron. Here are some more pics from the Presles area.












We've had a nice few days here although the climbing has not been all we had imagined. We did find somewhere out of the sun- Balme d'Etrange for any future expolorers - and had a couple of days there and did a few routes. Have found the climbing quite hard to get used to and have spent most of my time on a top-rope, however Iain managed a 7c+ on the second attempt yesterday which is not too bad at all.... (though I wasn't as impressed as I was to see a red squirrel soloing 6a twenty metres above the ground!)

We also ran into Graham and Kirsty which was a real coincidence given that we've seen very few other climbers since we've been here... Here they are at Balme d`etrange.

Presles

On Monday we arrived in Pont en Royans which is a small town wedged into a very narrow limestone gorge in the Vercors national park. We are camping further up the valley in a place called Chouranche. The valley itself is fairly spectacular but more so are the miles of huge limestone cliffs which cap the north side of the valley of which the photo above shows just a section. The clinbing area is known as Presles after the hamlet which sits on he plateau above.

As they face south (and it is really extremely hot in the sun) action has been fairly limited so far! The real strength of this place seem to be huge multi pitch routes which are out of the question due to the heat and mega hard overhanging tufa routes which are out of the question for at least one of the party! However we have done a bit since we got here and the injured finger seems to be doing ok - (taped up) fingers crossed.






Signing off now but will update soon........

Fontainebleau

We had four fairly productive days in Font; by day three we were remembering how to climb! The weather was ok for most of the time although it was still too hot in the sun to really manage much.

The journey from Calais was as bad as usual and following arrival at the campsite we managed to fall foul of the security system, fall out with the campsite lady, lose the car key in the dark and do this to the car.......


After a day spent taping the car back together and installing a new rear light we were ready for some boulder action: