Next Event: Cornwall
Trip report Written by Matt Everett:
Trebanog trip 7th March
The day started out dispondently; only 5 people turned up, the slight breeze that was blowing was bitterly cold, James had lost his guidebook from the day before on the gower, and I had just paid Tom for various payments. Ed turned up, we got the minibus, and squeezed all 5 of us on.
After a pit stop at tesco's, we got to Trebanog in sunshine! Then we opened the minibus door and felt the wind again, still cold. Layering up, except for Tom who only had shorts-(fail) we started climbing, and getting over the cold. 2 climbs later the wind had dropped dramatically and the true glory of Trebanog (lets face it, 'glory' is the only word) was revealed. James and I then proceeded to push the grades a bit, as James led a crimpy E1 and I led my first VS over the chimney that dominated the alcove. After a bit of hold searching, Ed led a tricky and featureless HS over a small roof, which proved a good challenge for John.
Next, James and I had a look at the sport routes that are in Trebanog. We did one that seemed like a 6b ish which James led and I dogged up...damn crimpers. Then James struggled up a 6c/7a as the sun scorched down. A couple of leads later some kids turned up as per Trebanog tradition asking for a go etc. As John was finishing on 'Last arete' and Webber was talking to some random guy, I started soloing a nearby VDiff with a fun looking start, closely followed by James. I managed to climb past James and top out, only to turn back to see James's 'oh ****' face followed by 'I need a rope or something'. Epic aside, I still think he enjoyed it.
Then we left and ate KFC in the minibus. Tom urinated on a church wall and John ordered too much food, as we sat around talking about everything and anything from corn to sex. Standard.
As we drove home James mentioned about retrieving his guidebook. Myself, Tom and Ed had nothing else to do, so we dropped John off at uni and set off to juniper wall to have a look for it. As it was getting dark now, we noticed a glow in the distance out on mumbles and realised as we got closer that it was a forest/gauze bush fire. Cool.
We parked the minibus at the walk in the juniper wall (it was night time by now) and started walking in in the bitter cold again. I had brought my head torch, and Ed had brought a small maglite rip-off from tesco, so we were sorted for light. We started marching through the fields in the dark, when we saw two eyes staring at us. Ofcourse, we knew it was a sheep, but as we got closer it didn't run away, and it became apparent why. The sheep had very recently (matter of hours according to farmer Tom) given birth to two tiny lambs. We were all very caught up in the moment and stopped to look at the lambs who were barely moving. Awww... Anyway more walking ensumed and we came to an opening, middle of nowhere and we found ourselves looking up at all the stars that were out. Then we caught glimpse of a shooting star amongst the sky! We felt quite priviliged at this point, and that this random adventure to go looking for a book on a beach seemed very much worthwhile.
Anyway we got to the second crag of the day, in pitch black and had a bit of a death scramble down with a big ass drop on the side. Me and James then went to look for the book as it seemed pointless all 4 of us going to the bottom to look. After a look around it was gone, so we scrambled back up to meet the others.
Walking back, navigating by the smell of the s***/manure/silage/sewage whatever it was that stank, we were faced with the fire directly ahead (but very far away ofcourse). We decided to make a night of it, and go get a closer look of the fire. We past the mother sheep again, only to be confronted, not with 2 bounding baby lambs frolicking in the night breeze... but two dead lamb corpses and a pretty annoyed looking mother. Avoiding antagonization, we left them, the random path through the fields and got back to the minibus in search of this massive fire.
Well we went one way, and it led us further away, Ed did a 3 point wall pretty much into a guys gate stump and then wheel-span away for chav effect. We followed some other roads, god knows where to, until we got pretty close to the fire. It was indeed a gauze bush fire, with 4 fire engines guarding all the paths leading to it. We did the classic tourist thing, we parked up and sat on the roof watching it all. Tom took some pictures too. After our curiosity was filled, we turned around and head home, taking out a cone on some roadworks on the way for giggles.
So it was a pretty damn good day. Awesome infact. Everyone who didn't turn up clearly missed an amazing day out of fun and mischief... and a bit of climbing.
Matt