France'99 - Day 5 (Sunday, Aug 22)

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We get our wakeup call from Jan Willem at around 8:00am, and still fresh for the week, have a shower before joining breakfast with the others. After breakfast, we all make small lunchpacks to take with us out of the (strangely appropriately) rock-hard french loafs.

Today we're going climbing. It looks like I'm the only one with my own climbing belt, having invested in one earlier this year when it became apparent that climbing is really addictive. Although Ellis has only climbed since May, she's in way better shape than me, and has climbed a few grade six routes apparently. I've managed one, although it took one block. The other members of the group haven't climbed as much - Lucinda has been a few times, as have the others.

We arrive at the face we're to climb, and Ellis and Willemina start putting the ropes in place. Ellis keeps assuring us (herself?) that she's had her full-on week last week (she took part in the Climbing week, the week before this one), and this "Action week" is supposed to be her rest week. For someone at rest, she's sweating a lot.

We start with a few grade four and five routes, and by the time everyone's finished them, it's close on lunch time already, so the bread comes out again, only to be devoured within minutes.

Climbing outside is so completely different from the clinical walls of the climbing hall that the two aren't really comparable. Its like the difference between walking to work every day, and a good cross-country walk. The world kinda fades away more easily, and the views are so much better.

After lunch, Willemina and Ellis set up a few more routes on a different side of the rock face. This time we're climbing beside a big (family?) group of Italian kids, who yell a lot of verbal encouragements to each other. At first this is great to see, but after a while it's frankly quite noisy. It's easy to tune out, though.

Not all of us climbed right through the afternoon - some (eh Lucinda?) had the good foresight to take a good book and to bask in the sun for a while. The rest of us climb on. When the going gets tought etc. Sheesh...