Wednesday 9th July
So there I was on the phone with Peri, she said "it's the best day of the week let's go outside"…..
I said I had to be back by 4:00 pm as my daughter was staying with me. So we decided on Almscliffe. Now I have not been to Almscliffe since 1995, the thoughts of "the polished horrors of Almscliffe" were going through my head.
Any way Peri picked me up and we started heading out of York on the A59 as we past over the A1 it was bugger the Yorkshire show….. well it was only 11:30 and the traffic had not started to build up, but we decided that we would come back to York via a different route.
Well we walked up to the crag and decided to start on something easy, Peri said we could start on fluted columns. I looked at the route from the bottom and said OK I will lead this. Well it had its thought provoking moments ( only my fourth outdoor trad lead all year) but i was a very good climb. Peri then led Flake climb another nice climb, good jams and good gear. Hmm now where is all the Polish ?
We started to get a few drops of rain falling on us so we decide to shelter by the Matterhorn boulder and wait to see if it was going to pour down, the shower soon moved on so we walked up to High Man as Peri wanted to climb Birds nest crack. She led the route very nicely with a few small rain drops falling around us, as I started to second the route I found some of the Almscliffe polish. But it is a good route with good gear and some very good hand and arm jams.
Anyway after this we went back to the Low man and I lead Stew Pot to finish off a very enjoyable day ( the rain had started to fall a lot heavier, so we left). We went back to York via Tadcaster to avoid any show traffic problems.
Almscliffe was a lot better than I remember it and will have to go back soon.