This time it's personal.

I had a pretty good spring in the South West. And by good I guess I mean bloody great. So great I lost my will to waffle on about it, sorry. I went down with a tolerable forecast, a refreshing amount of potential partners and a short but sweet wishlist. 19 routes that required 11 days climbing or something. Somehow (luck? bloody-mindedness? anti-hydral?) I did most of them. Except Uphill Racer escaped because the weather got too hot, Gold escaped because it was too horrifying for me and a ledge had fallen off (not under my weight I might add although while I was standing on a sort of block rigging a sort of lower-off, Stanners could see daylight up behind the block - I think he was belaying halfway to Dublin), Can You Walk Like You Talk escaped because I never got back. Of the others - Extreme Walks to Mean Feat, Life And Times to Andromeda Strain to False Gods - there were common threads: they were mostly fairly challenging, they were all truly enjoyable experiences, and they were all particular and personal desires.

Some of the desired routes corresponded exactly to "essential" coffee-table-book-ticking Rockfax-Top-50 "should" routes, but I wanted to do them *despite* all of that clutter. Some of them corresponded to "obvious local interest" but not so obviously what one would travel for. Some of them corresponded to "handful of known ascents" and in the shadow of nearby classics. But all of them had something that stood out to me in particular. A climbing style, a distinctive rock type, an alluring photo, a guidebook warning, a mysterious aura, and usually a less tangible element of intrigue. Why those routes in particular??

In the words of Mick Fowler:

"The Urge"

In the slightly more profound words of Calvin:

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul"

I sometimes don't know exactly why. But this time I always knew the end result - great experiences that lived up to my expectations. Of course this doesn't make me special, we all live climbing for the same reason (apart from those sat under a F8b for two decades maybe). But it makes me happy that I'm on the right lines for pleasure and satisfaction even if there are a lot of up and downs getting there.