Foolin' in Doolin

Spent Saturday afternoon in Doolin and got a good bit done this time. There's no photos but I might be able to salvage something from my previous trip. So I spent the first 40 minutes just wandering around looking at the different sectors. When I was about to start local climber Paul, who is originally from Dublin, turned up with his two dogs George and Rosín. Paul showed me around and we worked the problems together and tried a new line, FA going to Paul.

Doolin rock has been mentioned briefly before but I'll now elaborate. The rock in Doolin is mostly on small cliffs although there are some boulders. Its sharp due to weathering and has high friction. The cliffs themselves are mostly overhanging, probably about 3-4 metres high and pockmarked with cracks, pockets and breaks. Very sharp and fingery. One sector has problems going to about 7m, too high for me. There looks to be some really good slab problems too which I'll have a crack at next time I'm down.

The boulders themselves are good, they can be quite like the cliffs but at different angles. The tend not to be so sharp as they've been weathered by the sea instead of the elements. Most of them are big, probably weighing in at 20 tons+ and here's the thing: they change from year to year. Over the winter big storms roll in off the Atlantic moving the boulders around and bringing in new ones. Cool.  

A few more people turned up and sandwiches were munched much to George and Rosín's delight and we waffled for about an hour before I headed off. Jenny was at a conference in Limerick so we had a hotel room for the night. The next morning there was a spillage of orange juice at the breakfast bar, nothing spectacular, just some orange juice. However, the dude who was cleaning up cleaned the floor with his manky old grey stringy mop and then mopped the breakfast bar with it. How vile is that? I won't name the hotel for fear of legal action against this blog but I won't be staying there again.