More steps...

Ratho #1 - Went along with suitably low expectations and came away with surprisingly high reassurance. The ulterior motive was falling practice of course, and I was sweating in the car on the drive over about the prospect of dropping off! I decided to start small and work up, and ended up taking a few decent falls and doing a few decent routes. Fiend 1 - Punterage 0.

Falcon Crag - I've started to revise the Lake District guides and realise that I still have plenty of easy mileage to do there, not stuff that really fires me up but plenty of choice at least. Falcon Crag is a prime example as it's butt-ugly with weird rock and weirder lines, but there's loads of mid-grade routes to go at and the adventurous terrain, spaced protection and inevitable massive rope drag make for good trad practice. I did fine on a couple of easier routes, and enjoyed them despite the crag aesthetics (or lack thereof).

Castle Rock - More revision, this time of the quite frankly excellent Eastern Crags guide which not only covers a lot of climbing closest to Scotland, but has the best photo-topos I've seen for the rambling mashed up Lakes crags. The main wall topo at Castle Rock look like viewing a tube map on acid, but they do actually make sense of the features. Another couple of easy-ish routes, one of which took a wee bit of effort and I put that wee bit in and again it went fine. Rigor Mortis, actually a brilliant route, more enjoyment, more positive steps.

Ratho #2 - Slightly higher expectations, slightly better performance. I'm actually climbing closer to my normal Ratho average despite still punting along outside. More pumpy routes, more fun falls. Well not too many falls, with Robert D on the end of the rope with his super-stiff lock-off plate, I got a bit bored of the 6 Gs of deceleration at the end of each fall nearly snapping me in half. I need to go there with more skinny oiks and wee lasses I think ;).

I'm starting to feel like a crap climber climbing easy routes well, rather than a crap climber climbing easy routes badly. That is another step... I'm also enjoying the easy routes, which gives me the correct positive motivation to try things a bit harder....maybe....