I like a bit of jeopardy and so the activity for the weekend was deliberately kept secret from me by Liam. Unfortunately, he told me just before setting off that the plans were changing due to the adverse weather. It transpired that we had to switch cave walks, canyoning and other adventures for climbing and abseiling. It wasn’t what Liam planned, and it isn’t what Richard wanted when he found out, but I was excited to make the most of the day.
There’s me being brave on the side of a very big rock. Liam shinned up the rock like some sort of mountain goat, Ross got the next furthest up, then I braved just a little higher than I’m standing in the photo, with Richard managing to get up around three feet.
Our instructor was Steffan and after I had grilled him on his experience, the number of fatalities incurred under his leadership and forcing him to complete numerous other paperwork checks, I let him commence the training. He was brilliant though, always humorous, fun and thorough, I did feel confident throughout. He was engaging and really wanted to understand what we wanted to do.
For anyone interested in the location, this is Dinas Rock.
After some climbing practice in the morning, we got ourselves up the rock by scrambling up the route on the right. I like this sort of scrambling, where it’s protected from any steep drops, so I rather enjoyed it. Liam and Ross clambered up and I don’t think that Richard would mind me saying that he didn’t entirely enjoy all of his ascent and he nearly abandoned it twice. He said quite a few rude words at the top including the “why am I doing this?” which didn’t seem an unreasonable thing to ask. Unfortunately, he had a problem that once he was over half way up, the easiest way down was by abseiling, so he gamely accepted his fate.
Liam went down first as he’s the most confident at this. There was a little bit of work required at the bottom to send some equipment back to the instructor at the top, so we thought Liam was the most suitable adult to handle that. I’m pleased to say that he took control of that successfully.
I was next and I can’t say I entirely enjoyed getting into position. But, when the excitement began it was an enjoyable abseil down and I only lost footing once and fortunately regained it immediately. The instructor shouted down that Liam had done the same, so that made me feel better.
There was a slight panic from Liam at the bottom when he misheard my comment of “my plaster has fallen off” as “my harness has fallen off”, he was relieved when I mentioned it was just the plaster on my hand from a slight graze that had slid off.
I would definitely do this again, I felt very much in control when going down and I also felt entirely safe which is quite handy. The rocks were wet, although fortunately it didn’t rain during the day, which made them a bit more slippery but that didn’t prove a problem. A quick hug with Liam when I reached the ground to mark my bravery and then I had the excitement of watching Ross and Richard descend.
Then it was Ross, he’s done this before and he was cool, calm and collected. Technically very competent he didn’t really slip either, all nice and smooth.
Then it was time for Bear Grylls.
Richard reads this blog and so I’ll say that I can’t really upload all the video imagery of the event as he might not be entirely surprised and delighted. Well, he’d be surprised perhaps. It was exciting to see someone enjoying it so much that they were throwing themselves into the rocks all the way down and I’m pleased to report that his elbow wasn’t broken. Richard also made the most of his experience by taking a long time, but there was no rush and we, and numerous members of the public who had appeared, listened to some more bad language being shouted down….
But, huge credit to Richard for taking part, I think that we were all really brave. It might not be what we had expected to do, but I wouldn’t have changed it!
Thanks again to Steffan, who was also really open about the inaccessibility of what we wanted to do because of the high river levels. I’m very much keen to go back next year and give the things that we didn’t do a go, but I thoroughly enjoyed the abseiling and have many happy memories of the event.