The County, Shanner and The Peak

After Friday's dramatic but untimely end to proceedings Diff and I were in the odd position of having the cameras loaded and no-one to film!

Despite a lot of phonecalls and headscratching we came to the conclusion that there was nothing else to do apart from go climbing ourselves! So we headed south to jostle with the bank holiday crowds at Kyloe in The Woods in Englandshire.

Diff thinks that his cunningly camoflaged wardrobe will distract attention from that right foot pushing off a boulder. tsch.

The bank holiday crowds had obviously decided to go elsewhere today. One lone northumbrian was present, and he was polite enough not to visibly laugh at our efforts.

Diff, "I didn't fall off, I'm just having a lye down"

Extreme trampolining. Diff puts my new DMM mat through it's paces.

As usual when Diff and I are the subject there is nothing newsworthy to report bar some spectacular dismounts.

Next day, still with no-one to film, I headed north with Fiona Murray to the grotty hole in the ground, Balnashanner, that was once Scotland's premiere hard sport climbing venue. It's 5 years since I've been here and after subsequently traveling to many of europe's best crags, re-acquaintance was somewhat dissapointing. Quite literally a dump.

But we persevered and tackeld a couple of 7as that actually gave up some superb climbing. The first one with a low down crux that was very sequency, the second a total pumpfest that saved the hardest to the end.

Next day we headed to the Peak, our 6th filming trip there this year.

Anonymous climber working their project at Burbage South

It was a good day filming, and the climber was making good progress. But a violent wind was not only making filming difficult, but was also making the balancy moves high on the arete rather challenging. So no success, but good progress and we'll be back next week for stage 2.

Anonymous climber working the top section

Tomorrow I'm heading back to Sweden, this time for rock rather than ice, and Diff has a weekend filming kayaking for the BBC.

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Dave