Terradets broke me (but it's pretty)

Since Barcelona, we've been exploring inland Catalunya - first the province of Tarragona, then further north to Lleida. Although Catalunya's quite a big place (about the size of Wales), most of the population lives in the coastal cities of Barcelona, Tarragona and Girona. The inland areas are sparsely populated, very pretty and rural and, most importantly for us, full of rock.

We visited three different places in Tarragona:

• Margalef - powerful pocket climbing on towers of conglomerate rock with our friend Adam, who we meet on our way south.
• Arboli - more conventional limestone climbing in a beautiful setting. Sector El Falco in particular has stunning views over the valley to Siurana and Montsant.
• Montsant - more conglomerate rock, but with bigger and more positive pockets than Margalef. The climbing's less about power and more about endurance.

El Falco at Arboli

Andy has written about these in more detail. I've mainly been trying to relax a bit after my head issues earlier in the trip. I've had some good days climbing when my head's been working well, but also several days just enjoying the glorious sunshine and the scenery. I had a really good day at Arboli though (pink trouser power!) and managed my second 6a onsight of the trip.

About a week ago we moved north into Lleida province, starting with Terradets. It is beautiful here, with the Pyrenees visible in the distance on a clear day. It's an area we've not visited before, so we were keen to explore. Unfortunately, I've had a bit of a setback...

After traveling, we thought it would be a good idea to have a relaxed first day and do some easy multipitch - with hindsight, a big mistake.  The route we chose, a 200m 6b called Smoking, turned out to be, as our friend put it, "a bit spicy".  I had hoped to lead a few of the easier pitches, but backed off the first (grade 5) pitch, because it only had about 6 bolts in 30 m and the climbing felt much harder than the other 5s I'd done that week.  Andy put in big effort to lead the 2nd pitch (supposedly 6a!), which involved some savage pulls on tiny finger rails using insecure footholds, where the bolts were again generously spaced. He actually power-roared at one point - not something that's happened on a 6a for several years.

My attempt at seconding was much less successful.  At a blank section where the holds were extra tiny, I tried to stand up on a really awful foothold, but the rucksack I was carrying threw off my balance, and I ended up pulling really really hard on some tiny handholds to compensate. There was a loud, crunchy sort of noise, and suddenly it hurt to pull on anything with my left hand. I scrabbled and whimpered up to the belay, then demanded to go down - there was no disagreement from Andy.

Sad hand...

According to my internet research I've damaged the A4 pulley in my left ring finger - a classic climber's injury (I know damaging A2 is more common, but the pain seems to be concentrated round the second knuckle, not the first). Pulleys keep the finger tendons running along the bone when the fingers are bent, but crimping (pulling with fingers bent at an extreme angle) too hard can overload them. The advice from the internet seems to be ice and rest and no climbing for 1-3 weeks, followed by a gradual reintroduction. It's quite a specific injury - it only hurts if I crimp but not if I pull in a more open-handed way - but the important thing is to not accidentally aggravate it again before it's healed and make it worse.

It's been just over a week since I did it now, and the swelling's gone - I can get my engagement ring back on! I was going to try it out on some easy climbing today, but this morning the wind was gusting so much that the van was rocking on its springs, so might leave it a bit longer.

Witches Wall

In the meantime, I've been belaying Andy on his project at the excitingly named Witches Wall, and we've found a whole new, multinational circle of friends - other Witches Wall devotees. We've also done some of the many lovely walks round here - I think this deserves a post of its own. So I've been keeping busy. And in scenery like this you can't complain too much, can you?

View over Embassament de Terradets

Barcelona (for the cactus enthusiast)

This week, Andy turned 30. Since this is apparently when life begins, we thought we ought to celebrate. So we took a little break from the climbing van dirtbag lifestyle and spent a few days staying in an apartment in Barcelona with family and friends. We'd specifically set aside a part of the trip budget for this as our joint birthday and Christmas presents to each other, but I did get Andy a magnetic lizard on the day too.

We spent a lovely few days eating too much and did a range of touristical things. We did well - in four days we sampled several varied sides of Barcelona: Las Ramblas, a castle, the gothic quarter, the Gaudi architecture and the seafront. However, when I looked back through my photos I found that most of them seem to be pictures of cacti. Anyway, here is what we got up to - where appropriate I've put in links to pictures of the sights of Barcelona taken by better photographers...

Day 1: we wandered up Las Ramblas, and had lunch while we waited for our party to become complete. Later we walked over to Barceloneta, and had seafood in a restaurant near the sea. We then walked back to Las Ramblas and stopped in a bar on the edge of the old town to order a beer. We got a bit more than we bargained for...

That's a half-size wine bottle, but still...

Day 2: a slow start due to the massive beers of the previous evening. We bravely headed out at about lunchtime to visit a fort in Parc de Montjuïcs that's on top of a hill looking out over the sea. There is a cable car that takes you up the hill, but one of our group refused because "I don't understand how they stay up", so we walked. This meant that we went through the botanical gardens, including one garden comprised entirely of lots of different types of cactus. This is where I took most of my photos.

Wild west...

Round cacti

Fuzzy cacti

These ones made cool shapes

These ones have flowers

At the top, we didn't go into the fort because it was expensive and there was a queue, but we did have some good views out over the sea (although mainly the cargo port). Again though, my photos mainly focus on cacti - we noticed an unusual type of graffiti where people had written their names on the leaves of the clifftop aloe vera plants.

The view...

...and the cactus graffiti

We then headed back down the hill and stopped for coffee at a quirky coffee shop with construction site themed decor. The walls were decorated with hazard tape, construction signs and toy tools and, most entertainingly, there was a skeleton in a hi-vis jacket installed at one of the tables reading a map! They did very nice pastries too (I forgot to check what the place was called but it was just down the road from Paral-lel metro station).

A long-term customer...?

Fueled by coffee and pastry, we caught the metro up to the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi. It's pretty impressive and weird, and I utterly failed to get any decent photos of it. Since it's pretty famous though, here's a link to some official ones.

We celebrated Andy's birthday that evening - a day early but some of the others had to leave the next day. We had some fancy cocktails (courtesy of Andy's mum - thank you!!), then dinner in the old part of town.

Day 3: Andy's actual birthday. We started off with a tapas lunch on La Rambla. The set menu at the restaurant we picked seemed surprisingly reasonably priced. The catch turned out to be that if you ordered a beer or sangria it came in a glass as big as your head and was very expensive! Slightly wobbly from all the sangria, we wandered over to look at Barcelona's other cathedral (the old gothic one), then went to Park Güell to look at some more Gaudi architecture.

More enormous drinks...

Day 4: we went to the beach. I dug a really deep hole! We then sent some time wandering along the seafront, and had ice cream.

Yay!!

Overall, it was a fun trip back to civilisation. We're in the van again now and have been easing ourselves back into climbing. We spent our first night back in the van near Cornudella de Montsant, about 2 hours inland from Barcelona. In the morning we went to the cafe and sat near some other climbers, then we went to the climbing shop - Andy got some new climbing shoes and I bought some awesome pink trousers! We then stood near some rocks in Siurana to have lunch - someone Andy knew was out with a group of friends so we stood and chatted for a bit and watched them climb. Finally, at about 5 pm, we arrived in our intended destination, Margalef, and I climbed some mini-routes (just over 10m long) until it got too dark to see the footholds.