Lynx in the Lynx's

Yesterday before the monsoon season kicked off again I went climbing with Keen Youth. We went to Wildcat in Matlock Bath. A crag I have never visited and neither of us had ever climbed at, Dan had visited before to take photos.
The approach is geriatric dog friendly - well theoretically unless said geriatric dog decides to wander off the obvious path and then go rolling down the slope! Luckily he seemed to avoid any injury and spent the rest of the day hanging out with rucksacks and helping Dan and I finish off our cold pizza lunches.
Unsurprisingly many of the route names at Wildcat have a catty theme, we decided to go for the Rockfax Top 50 routes on our first visit. Finding them is no easy task with the trees in full leaf, but we managed to navigate our way to the base of the right bit of crag and started on Lynx (HS 4b,4a). Luckily once in the right place some kind soul has scratched the route name on a boulder at the base! This was also the first outing for a new pair of Boreal shoes I managed to acquire after a lot of trouble - it's impossible to find small Boreal shoes to try on, I ended up making a bit of a wild guess based on a completely different model! Anyway, they arrived and I have now worn them for their first and very aptly named route, I think once they've stretched  a little bit they'll be fine but the left foot was pretty sore, which doesn't make for using the feet too well!

Lynx climbed we continued on to Golden Yardstick a pleasant VS and finished off with Cataclysm - a better HVS. All very enjoyable especially once I retreated to worn in shoes!! Thanks Dan for a good day.

Today as the monsoon has arrived and I'm a bit weak and feeble I didn't go out on my planned bike ride......it's not looking good for a stunning performance in the Etape Eryri in a couple of weeks time!
Whilst I'm on a bike theme -  did my first couple of 10 mile time trials over the last 2 weeks. Good time the first week, not so good the second, but it was definitely windier, tomorrow I'm on marshalling duty instead which earns me a bucket load of points for the Club Points table, way more than I'll ever manage otherwise!! Then back to Ashton for some more circuiting on tuesday - again I'm hoping I'll be better than last week which was frankly pretty poor even by my standards!!

Here's a bit of film from a few weeks ago - don't think the guy behind is gaining much drafting advantage!!!