Young And Easy And Under The Apple Boughs.

A surprisingly pleasant "breather", this line is not as crumbly as it appears, and is outside of the day's mould, remaining unseen amongst the creations of it's grand neighbours. Left as an oddity and ungrabbed by attention, it seemed to "spring in" when ready, and rang with the pleasure of those promising, blissful days of May.

...

This John Redhead is a cunt

 ...

There is a certain pleasure in doing a route that has, even to a small degree, a mark of the man. A Dawes grit route, a Pritchard Gogarth wobble-fest, a Smith roof or crack (or usually both), a Crocker sea-cliff line, a Fowler chossheap, a Bob Smith heinous highball... Of course I am far too bumbly for almost all of these, but occasionally something "outside of the day's mould" slips through the net of truly big numbers and is accessible to the masses. YAEAUTAB (jeez!) is one of a solitary handful of routes in ...And One For The Crow that I am actually capable of, the second one I have done, and an inspiration that was solely due to the book and photo. It definitely felt outside of the day's mould for slate, being a very trad experience with committing climbing above spaced gear - no bolts, crimps nor rockovers in sight.

Something else very much outside of the day's mould is this (although given the quality and accessibility of the crag, it shouldn't be!):

 

(photo: Terry Taylor)

Diamond Eliminate, at Bird Rock. One of the finest truly roadside adventures in the whole of Wales. If you can cope with the 1 minute uphill walk in, the Diamond face of The Bastion towers over you, gently overhanging for 45m. Steady juggy bold-ish E2 5b climbing neatly sandwiches a committing E4 5c crux on slopers past a definitive "cluster of bollox" gear selection, and leads to a fine summit experience at the apex. Typically for me this was an 8 year inspiration, following a showery recce in 2007, and typically it turned out to be a highly enjoyable experience under the watchful eye of local guru TT  - alas not one of his routes though, but I'm sure I'll do more of those soon.