Cranky Climbing

If you're travelling and climbing, new crags don't always meet your expectations. It happens every once in a while, if you tend to go for smaller and less climbed places, but it's not that uncommon to confront problems at bigger cliffs either.

Let me share you some of the worst let-downs me and T have experienced before and during our road trip in Europe. My intention is to give you a good chuckle as well as a heads up of what to look out for at an unfamiliar crag. There Is No Crag Yes, it can happen. We've stepped into this mine at least once in Bolonia, Spain. It was in January last year, when me and T escaped a few chilly nights from El Chorro and decided to go bouldering in Bolonia.
After circling around the coastline near Tarifa without any sign of the promised boulders, we gave up. Luckily a few day's of climbing in San Bartolo offered enough exercise until the weather got warmer again in El Chorro. To this day, it's still a mystery to us whether there i…

Are you up for a few of days of bouldering in Murcia? Let's go then! Drive through the city part of Alberca Las Torres, enter the El Valle regional park and squirm up the hill for a couple of minutes. In the shady forest lies a band of limestone boulders, that offer you problems from 5+ to 7b.

Hold on a second. Why am I sharing our encountering with these boulders, that can't be described as 'breathtaking', 'crazy cool' or anything else exceptionally great? Because I want to show you a glimpse of what's a climber's life on the road really like. In that life, you aren't always climbing at world-famous crags (like Verdon) or even at medium-sized cliffs (like Rédovan).  Every once in a while you end up cranking smaller and less-known rocks, that just happen to be near you.

The boulders in Murcia are exactly that. A handful of blocks, that feel almost abandoned by local climbers and are not really known by tourists. They offer you enough puzzle for one…