Bit of a change from the usual rural, unspoilt landscape that usually features in this blog. Fairy cave is an old quarry in Somerset, with walls of Limestone, mostly slabs. It's been on my list of places that I've wanted to visit for a while, and with one of my mates now at University in Bristol and with my time living down South coming to an end we went last week.
Took me and Joe an hour and a half to get from Dorset to Fairy cave and we met up with some of my friends, Matt, Dom and Dom's flat mate, James there. Arriving at about 10:30, it was colder than I had expected. With how the quarry is positioned the walls are mostly always in the shade. Still psyched to climb I racked up for the first route of the day, which happened to be an awesome slab E2 up some solid, if slightly dirty limestone called Lumbar Puncture, (may have got a bit too excited and run it out quite a bit....).

Whats Happening At The Mo.....
Just moved back up to Rotherham, so super psyched for grit and the coming winter season!
Had a brilliant summer working for Land & Wave in Dorset, now bring on the future.

​Last Month I visited South Wales with a friend from work to do some climbing. It was the second time I have been to South Wales and the climbing surprised me yet again! On my first visit we went to the usual tourist spot of Three Cliffs Bay and Fall bay on another day. On both days we enjoyed routed on mostly unpolished, rough limestone, perfect!
This time we started by visiting Little Tor, just around the corner from Three Cliffs and as with three cliffs can only be accessed so many hours either side of low tide as the whole lower few metres of the crag is underwater at high tide. The routes again where brilliant, not at all chossy as you would expect from limestone! Most of Little tor was made up of a surface of flakes, (as you can see in the picture), with some pretty killer cracks in between.
With the day starting miserable I Lead first picking Scout Crack, a vertical crack about fist wide. As it was a bit drizzly I elected to keep on my approach shoes. Brilliant climb and you can see why it has 2 stars, perfect fist jams and foot jams all the way, improved by missing the ledge on the left and only using the crack.
The weather soon improved and we moved on to some of the harder stuff at the crag. There was a really nice looking line going up the middle of the face that included a few jams, big moves and small pockets. When looking in the guide book found it was called 'Super Direct', given E1 5c. Nice line and glad I had my Alien’s with me!
The following day we only had a few hours before we had to start the long drive back for work, so we had to choose a non tidal venue, picking Boiler slab. Took longer than it should have on the walk in due to getting slightly lost! Again we started on the easier stuff, my friend leading ‘Classic’, a really easy route, but supposed to be one of the oldest routes in the Gower so a must climb and it was okay.
I preferred the harder stuff which had a nice amount of exposure, which when you added a quite strong breeze made the climbing rather interesting! Again the gear was bomber and the rock mostly solid.
Over the two days the routes where nice and the scenery postcard perfect. I will defiantly be returning to do more climbing in South Wales in the future, hopefully I’ve psyched you to give south wales a chance too.