Summer bouldering on Simonside.

Weekend forecast was funny. Didn't really make many plans. Ended up on a last minute trip down to Northumberland, where the weather was neither funny nor funny in fact it was fully fine. Solid sunshine, a bit of a breeze, and definite dryness. Perfect for checking out Simonside on a long summer's day. Unfortunately there was a slight technical hitch when my planned partner didn't appear nor answer any sporadic phone contact over 2 hours waiting. It later turns out he had a car crash and was admitted to hospital for a few stitches OOOOPS.

Oh well in the meantime I made some use out of the 4 hour round trip by hiking up onto the Simonside plateau, via a serious of blatant and cruel false summits, on a bumbly bouldering mission. This kinda sucked as it didn't involve any Easy Trad, but was kinda cool as it did involve a lot of walking, a fair bit of easy bouldering mileage, some renewed inspiration for Northumbrian rock (useful in the current return to dire weather), as well as a useful recce of a few cool problems for winter conditions. It felt like a "full" afternoon out and was vaguely useful training for the greater ranges so that's nice. Still missed the trad tho, still missing bigger challenges tho.