Advertisement
The calendar apparently tells me I've been back home for 7 months now. I couldn't tell you. I slept for most of it. But then I heard wisperings of the 'A' word, and I was woken from my slumber.
I'd heard rumours that a couple of climbers I'd met through my Asian wanderings were going to spend Easter in Fontainbleau. Fontainbleau had been talked about lot since I'd started hanging out with this queer breed of people that call themselves climbers. Fontainbleau they would wisper, is set in the forest only 40 minutes on the train from Paris. There lay the sands of an acient sea bed scattered with thousands of smooth granite boulders just begging to be climbed. Hard problems, easy problems. It doesn't matter, because they're all beautiful. Just what I need I thought, to reawaken the senses.
Wanting to throw myself back in at the deep end, I figured there was nowhere I would feel more at home than 10 hour night bus from London to Paris. (Just so happens it was about a third of the price of the Eurostar). Easy. Then there's nothing like getting the first tube across Paris in the morning to
get the train out to the rather exquistie Parisian suburbs of Fontainbleau. Fontainbleau is a beautiful little town with a rediculously big chateau, pizza to die for and a carousel. After stocking up on baguettes, brie and chorizo and bumping into a few Norweigians that you know, I'd climbed in China with but hadn't exactly planned on meeting up with in France, we negotiated our lift out to the forest and set up camp.
I was worried I might not be strong enough to climb. I'd heard that hibernating wasn't the best preparation for a climbing trip, but I figured you don't know untill you try these things. As it happened I need not have worried about the climbing. There is so much easy stuff and because this is the birthplace of bouldering (about a hundred years ago). All I had to do was look for the orange blobs of paint (which I think meant 'this one is for kids') and the routes spoke for themselves. There were lots of big crimps and jugs and slopers for Hannah to get all touchy feely with the rock. Cold granite has the most AMAZING friction. This was probably the first time
I'd climbed in humidity below 90% so my hands felt like they were glued to the rock. Unfortunately I didn't actually climb like I had those Spiderman hands. Definately need more sleep in the training programme I reckon.
When I wasn't climbing I was probably eating French delicacies or drinking beers by the campfire. Or sitting in a bistro drinking coffee watching everyone rush to the boulangerie to get enough baggettes to sustain them and their entire extended family for the mandatory 3 hour lunch break. Or watching someone half my age climb something I struggled to get my first foot off the ground. Or wandering between boulders wandering if God really is so cool that he had us wierd climbing folk in mind when he designed this place.
Its funny how much you can experience in one week in a foreign land and how little you can experience in 7 months on your home territory. Maybe I'm just greedy but I reckon I could live these jam packed weeks for say the rest of my life.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.143s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 14; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0762s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Markos!
non-member comment
Daaaayyyum
Well I'll be damned. You can just call me the little green monster, cos I'm brimming with envy!!!