Provence

15 Apr 2011

It’s certainly a long time since I last blogged.  Over the last 2 months I’ve emersed myself into the world of motherhood, climbing and going on holiday, rather than the usual bad habits of checking emails too often or saying yes to a few too many bits of work. 

At the beginning of March, Nic, Vanessa and I braved the long journey down to the south of France.  We started as we mean (or hope) to go on.  What a fantastic holiday but we now know why families go on bouldering trips.  It’s a lot easier.  But the lure of sunny routes in Provence was too much for us.  We decided just to go down there and see if we could climb.

We stayed in Faucon (above) with Craig, Vicky and Elula in their gite http://www.veloventoux.com/index.htm, not far from Buis les Baronnies.  The snow-capped Mont Ventoux was visible from our bedroom window and it dominated the view from some of the crags we visited like St Leger and the Dentelles.  Over the three weeks we also went to Venasque, Baume Rousse, Ubrieux and Malucene. Quite lot of places really.  Very varied and all with their own charms.

Vanessa seems to like the outdoors, which is good because for a few years at least she’s not going to have much of a choice in the matter.  We didn’t quite master getting her to sleep at the crag (the picture below doesn't really represent reality, she was quite picky about 'conditions') but she does enjoy sucking on a few caribiners.

It soon became very apparent how necessary a third person would be and Craig came to the rescue.  We really appreciated this but made sure we were as well prepared and as efficient as possible not to put him off.

It was great to be climbing again although it took some getting used to.  Mainly in terms of where to put Vanessa!  And switching between climbing and baby care all day long meant I forgot to eat or drink as much as I should have.  By the end of the holiday I’d onsighted many 6cs and flashed a 7a.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but I came away perfectly happy.  I gave up breastfeeding (thank god) a week before going and towards the end of the holiday along with avoiding croissants and baguettes I started to lose weight (at last).

 

Nic carrying Vanessa in the car seat to get to the crag!

The feeling of climbing again on rock is really great despite the multitude of moves I attempt to make, which my body doesn’t always agree with.  Unfortunately on the last week I was completely exhausted.  Every scrap of energy which I might have gained from stopping breastfeeding was used up climbing!  One day I’ll learn to take it easy, but probably not.  We wouldn’t have swapped any of it for anything else though.  It’s fun to have Vanessa along with everything we do.

So much more to say but I'll report back on project pull up, project push up and project sit up.  All are ongoing...