sad to say goodbye, but happy for next new adventures to begin

We were sad to say goodbye to Ceuse and climbing with Dave, Caroline, Neal, Naomi and Kevin.  It had been a great 2 weeks, but with all good things they must come to an end for new adventures to emerge.

We have a sort of half hatched plan!!  Numbers and letters in the back of our minds, but the real aim of the trip to climb and love the climb and the grades and numbers and will take care of themselves.  Things are slowly coming together for both of us and we started to realise this in Orpierre on Monday.  I onsighted my first 6a+ of the trip and almost onsighted a 6b (so close and yet so far).  Although a little dissappointed I'm happy that I'm making progress.  Whilst I was on the 6b Andrew was on the 7a next to me and although he did not get it clean, he lead it all the way to the chains and got all the moves.  It is only stamina (not strength) that is letting him down.

We said goodbye to Kevin on monday night and when we all got up on tuesday morning we were 6, soon to by 4 as Neal and Naomi were busy packing their belongings as we got ready for the short (ha ha) drive to Aillefroide.  Under the impression it was a mere 50 minute drive, close to 2 hours later we pull into one of the car parks in Aillefroide.  Almost immediately we bumped into Howard, Brigid and Niamh.  Our bouldering buddies for the day.  I always love meeting people on trips but when its random or unexpected its even better.  We'd a lovely afternoon amongst the boulders in the valley of Aillefroide, each of us knowing if we'd anticipated the actual length of the journey we probably would have thought twice about going.  We were so glad we did - what an amazing picturesque rock filled paradise.   Yes, I must go back and actually do some of the spectacular routes.

On wednesday morning before embarking on dismantling our little home and packing it into the car Andrew and I hiked up Petit Ceuse which gives way to fantastic views of Ceuse and the surrounds valleys and mountains.  After a leisurely breakfast and more goodbyes  we were on our way to Gorge
Du Tarn. 

 We thought we knew best - we looked at a map and plotted the shortest route and off we trot.  2 hours later and less than 60 miles travelled we decided maybe the satnav was right and we should have taken the motorway.  What we thought was going to be a 2/3 hour drive finally took us 6 hours, but we rolled into Le Rozier to meet up with Christian and Andrea who'd kindly saved us shady number 38, the plot for our new home :D