So the super strong team of Rich, Mark, Scott, Tom, Joe, Russ and Mr Alderson, all set off early on the final Friday of half term towards our first chosen destination of Bowles Rocks, after a disturbing journey and much talk (mostly by Rich) of Tom featuring in his new video 'Tom Natural' the scary thing is it's worse than it sounds. Anyway the plan for the day was to park in the Bowles Rocks car park and walk the round route climbing at all 7 outcrops and finishing back at the car. Our troubles started as soon as we got to the Bowles Rocks car park, Bowles Rocks is one of two crags on the walk that usually demands a paid entry, but seen as we would only be doing one climb and only spending half an hour there paying our hard earned cash to the lady in the office seemed pointless but still we were disallowed entry and told we were only allowed to park in the car park for the day, this was OK as the back up plan was to come back at night and climb there.

After much discussion we decided to set off across large water logged field toward the first destination of Eridge Green. We arrived about 20 minutes later to find a small yet shockingly good crag, there was no one else climbing so we had the whole crag to ourselves, which is always nice. After much searching we dumped our bags and spied out a route, Mark and Rich pick a 5b by the name of Battlements Crack. This route was easily completed with style by all climbers except Mark (and his semi broken arm) who then picked an easier route which he too finished. After much laughing over Mr Alderson's special camcorder film we moved on to our next destination, high rocks and all its silly continuations. On arrival to high rocks we found the sign bearing extortionate entry fees, so plan b*2 was put in to action and we found a hole in the fence to climb through, this plan also failed as all were scared but the sign reading dogs on patrol and the picture of a scary dog. Undeterred we trekked on through slime city of High rocks, Continuation and Annex. We found possibly the only suitable climb in the form of a slim boulder problem which all completed in trainers and boots.

Our next destination was Bulls Hollow where we stopped for lunch and climbed Gangway Wall 3b, this proved easy for all. By now the hot sun was beating down and when Tom spoke of removing his T-shirt we knew it was time to move to a bouldering Mecca of the Southeast, Toad Rock. Here most of the team (Rich, Tom, Russ and Joe) centred their attention to a problem which involved a nasty mono and a dyno to a medium to poor jug, rich completed the problem 3^rd time after grabbing the jug, but the problem still managed to stop Joe, Russ and Tom completing it. Rich then decided to show off and us up by doing the problem in trainers, then missing out the vital mono and then finally missing out the vital mono in trainers.

Our final destination was to be Harrison’s, after another reasonably long walk we arrived where we set-up Bulging Wall 5b and Zig Zag 5a. All climbers completed these routes and as we had some spare time and the friction was good Rich decided to have a go at Jingo Wobbly 6b after finally getting to the second crux Rich popped off and decided to leave it for another day.

We then left Harrison’s and walked back to the car where all were too well knackered to climb at Bowles, and decided to drive home. 

By Russ Bates