Easter climbing at Windgather

At the top of the first lead of the day

My beautiful girlfriend Emma is currently making her final preparations to attend her Single Pitch Award training. So to get some leading in we headed out for a spot of camping and climbing. We decided to head to Windgather near Buxton, a nice, small, group friendly crag. After giving Emma her Easter present of a set of Mammut crag indicator quickdraws, we headed out. Despite being infested with children (Emma had some thoughts on that here), we had an excellent day of climbing. I am so proud of how well Emma is climbing, considering how quickly she has learn to lead, place gear, build belays, she is an excellent climber. I watched Emma lead several routes, and was impressed with how smoothly she lead and

Em on High Buttress Arete (D**)

placed gear. Her gear placements were excellent (as you will see from the difficulty I had in removing some of them on the video!). Highlight of the day was seeing Emma on High Buttress Arete (D**), she confidently and professionally lead the route, having watched someone floundering around on one move for over 10 minutes. Considering the difficulty of building belays at the top of some of the climbs on Windgather, Em did incredibly well to build efficient belays after only been shown once, and I was so confident in her abilities that I didn't even feel the need to run around to the top and see what she had done. Overall an excellent day climbing, we got plenty done then headed over to the Cat and Fiddle for a well earned toasty and a brew.

#ProudBoyfriend

A roller coaster relationship with climbing.

Emma on Trident Arete (VD)

Over the last few years I’ve really struggled with motivation to enjoy myself in the outdoors, particularly with climbing. During my teacher training (and even the year preceding) I had very little time to do anything except work, plan, mark, and try and grab some sleep. (Incidently, anyone who says teachers have it easy, doesn’t have a clue)… I suppose I got it into my head that I couldn’t enjoy climbing anymore. I mentioned to Emma a few nights ago that ‘I didn’t enjoy climbing anymore’, this was after a particularly enlightening indoor climbing session where I realised I had lost much of previous strength and stamina, and I felt pretty useless I must admit. I suppose at the time, I meant it, but looking back I was probably still a bit miffed at my poor performance at the wall.

After I finished work early on Friday, Emma suggested we go climbing, and to be honest, at that moment, that was the thing I wanted to do most! So we literally grabbed the kit and headed over to Harborough Rocks, with the aim of getting Emma a couple of leads towards her SPA. As I watched Emma leading, it was the first time (in a very long time), where I actually felt like I wanted to climb; it was a feeling I hadn’t had for a long time. Previously when I’d gone climbing, I just sat there wishing I was home on the Xbox , or chilling, or doing anything else that wasn’t climbing. I was really happy to feel a genuine spark of passion, to get climbing again. With Emma doing her SPA training soon, and summer fast approaching, I find myself looking forward to getting out and getting some climbing done! It’s amazing what being with someone you really care about and you share so much with can rekindle in you; I really, genuinely thought I had fallen out of love with climbing, but as I sit here writing this article, all I can think is that I want to plan what leads I want to do when me and Emma head to Wales in a couple of weeks. #LetsDoThis