Callanqueing Around

A long-weekend in Marseilles seemed like the easiest way to get the required information and photographs for the new book - so we booked a hotel on the outskirts and tootled across there on Saturday.
Then it was down to work, Morgiou, Sormiou, Luminy, Les Goudes, En Vau - it has been a busy few days - and hot too! The fact that it was the first warm weekend of the year meant that are was heaving with city-dwellers heading out - I had forgotten how much I dislike crowds!
Despite that the Callanques really are a beautiful part of the world, and nowadays they seem pretty much a closed book to UK climbers - as an example a search of photos on UKC for "Kalymnos" produced 150 images, and for "the Callanques" a big fat zero!
It is a pity that the city is so close, and the fact that you have drive through the grottier end of it to reach the climbing is a bit of a downer. Mind you once over any one of the various cols it is a whole different world - a magnificent wilderness.

Weather Forecasting

A week ago they (Meteo France) forecast a couple of days of rain, these duly arrived exactly as predicted, and for just over 36 hours it rained on an off, sometimes heavy, sometimes light - then it stopped, again - as predicted. Compared to the usual ridiculous guesswork back home, watching the TV, checking the various sites plus the radar, then making tentative plans - and they nearly always get it wrong! How hard can it be?
The rain meant I could get a heap of work done proofing Western Grit and also that all the rivers in the Esterel had more water in them than we have ever seen - a great excuse for a walk in the hills.
The good news - Meteo France is forecasting 10 days of sunshine - cracking stuff!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Beach-walks, hill-walks, exploring, bouldering, researching, climbing, writing, editing, photoing and photoshoping.

Projects and places; Lofoten, Mallorca, The Peak, Lancashire(!), Catalunya, Verdon, Kalymnos, Cote d'Azure. Planning, travelling, book reviews, more climbing, sorting, shuffling, blogging, hiking, logging, chainsawing too.

Publishers, printers, deadlines, places to go, people to meet, rocks to climb and books to write, awards to accept - how did we ever have time to go to work!

Its a tough job, but someone has got to do it - glad its me! ;-)

Something in the Air

It is beginning to feel like spring is just around the corner - the mimosas are in all their full yellow glory, there was even a Mimosa Festival last week-end, and suddenly the place was heaving! Not really sure where everybody appeared from though, and of course they have all vanished again. Also it is warming up nicely, it was up to 15 degrees today.

We have continued to explore this delightful area, interspersing short local walks with longer trips away working on the book. A big day checking the state of the bolts on a couple of hundred of the routes at Sainte Victoire was the most recent.
Now there are only seven weeks left - its almost time to start planning again. I quite fancy returning to the Verdon on the way home, its years since I have climbed there.
Then there is the summer - maybe we could make it back up to Lofoten just one more time!
I'm glad to say that the autumn is already sorted though - it just has got to be back to fabulous Kalymnos - spending five and half weeks there last year was brilliant, I think maybe we need to stay a bit longer this time though!

Halfway House

Eight and a half weeks gone - that flew by - and eight and half to go; bugger! Dave Gregory has gone home and of course the weather has turned from mixed to sparkling. After dropping him off at the airport we visited La Trinite, an old disused quarry on the outskirts of Nice. It might seem like an odd choice of a crag for a selected climbs guide, but it is a perfect 'airport-day' venue - 10 mins from the airport and with parking close by.

The brouhaha about the French guides continues in the European climbing press - a few folks have got their knickers in a bit of a twist over it. Fortunately, as Walt Unsworth told me many years back after a similar furore over my tiny Costa Blanc guide (some things never change!), all publicity is good publicity. We have now had more coverage that we could ever have generated ourselves; enquires about when the books will be out and what the actual coverage will be have gone through the roof!

Whether or Not?

The same old pattern repeats itself, with a regularity that is almost unbelievable. Colin went home after a rather unsettled spell and we were blessed with three and a half weeks of glorious sunshine. Dave Gregory arrived a week ago and we haven't seen the sun once since then! It may actually be the longest unsettled spell that we have had down here in over 20 years of regular visits. We have managed to climb and to get some walks in but it has been very much dodging the showers and grabbing the our moments as and when. It would appear that the weather Gods thought DG was going home tomorrow, as the forecast is much better, lets just hope its right before he has to head of back into the snow!
At least the poor weather has given me the chance to really get stuck into the Cote d'Azure guide, it is already looking really good, another award winner on the way maybe. Oddly some souls are trying to whip up resentment against it amongst French climbers - sad small minds!

Guidebook Writing - Sheesh

Another lovely forecast, I decided to head for Chateauvert to take some shots and do a few routes. It is a great spot, big pitches and excellent rock, plus it gets all the sun that is going. I had already tried to photo the crags from below, but the valley is just too narrow and there are so many trees in the way. I checked the map and Google Earth and it was obvious that there was a road/track on the opposite side of the valley, though it was a few hundred metres back from the edge.
A couple of false start with the sat nav (really rough dirt-tracks shown as 'roads') and we got fairly close. It took three separate trips over two hours, heading into a complete wilderness (dense vegetation, fallen trees, briers, thorn bushes, loose rock, big drops) and two false starts before I finally located a jutting promontory that gave me the shots I wanted. By the time I got back to the car I was bushed (physically and metaphorically) and settled for a gentle drive home! We stopped briefly in Correns to photo an astounding mural on the wall there - superb.