Wednesday

Fourteen hours later a house is booked for the week and we head off to the granite boulders of Cresciano. The trees are bare and a carpet of crunchy golden leaves leads us to the wildly angular boulders of one of the most beautiful areas I’ve climbed in. Set a few hundred meters up from the valley floor, these boulders have fallen from the huge granite crag just above, and whilst few in number they certainly make up for it in quality. The hill continues on and on, right up to the snow topped peaks, which must be at least a few thousand meters higher. The boulders that litter the hill side can all be accessed from the path that follows the cliff at various heights, where the boulders tend to be concentrated into about 6 areas along a 2 mile stretch of the cliff.

The warm up is strange in the sense that although the boulders are few in number there seems to be a bit of everything, from crimpy roofs to slopey arêtes and weird bulges. The classic 8a of the area and surely one of the best anywhere is "la boule," a burly body tension fest taking a diagonal line up an undercut beach ball. It all seems ok apart from this one move which is absolutely desperate, feeling more 8b than 8a. As we leave, some of the locals suggest we try this really bizarre move involving a hip and knee scum that brings the grade down. Thanks for telling us earlier guys!

The last text message went to plan and we meet the two Ben’s and Jerry outside the tourist information center. Knackered from a hot day in Font’ and the subsequent 12h drive we head off to our 7 bedroom apartment in the town center. It’s not quite as luxury as we imagined but it has a TV with 30 channels, which can’t be bad.

We’re all starved and the local restaurant seems good, so we all order pizza apart from Jerry who decides to be healthy and go for the salmon. Our huge pizzas arrive and then a couple of wafer thin slices of salmon arrive atop a handful of lettuce. The poor dear is not happy.

Thursday

It’s pissing it down. Check out the local castle. It’s pissing it. Have a coffee. It’s pissing it. Go to Cresciano. You guessed it. Some of the locals have a huge tarpaulin covering a steep roof. They’re pretty keen. Even I have never resorted to that. Malc decides to show us Fred Nicoles latest desperate and the worlds 1^st to be graded 8c (that’s Font8c). "Dreamtime" is a stunning 20 mover on a boulder similar to the Bowderstone, only with much smaller and fewer holds. This stunning piece of rock links an 8a+ into an existing stand up 8b. Word has it Fred fell off the penultimate move many times on his 20 day assault. On a previous day visit Malc had fallen off the last move of the 8b within an hour and is really keen to finish this and give the whole thing a blast. But he thinks even with both sections wired it would take a concentrated effort of at least a week or more to get the necessary fitness for the link. And if you’re aware of just how strong he is, this really must be arm numbingly hard.

Friday

Jerry just does a 7c+ arête, Ben just does an 8a roof, Ritchie and I don’t, Malc runs a few laps on everything and almost does an 8b roof.

I decide to celebrate my near success with a tour of the local bars and some Italian Karaoke, whilst I leave the boys to their fat burners and protein powder.

Quote of the week goes to Rich Heap, "We’ve got so much failure on tape, it’s incredible".