Rannoch Mountaineering Club 

www.climbrannoch.co.uk

Old Crocks Hotrock in the Languedoc

There was a pitifully low turnout from the Rannoch at this year’s spring hotrock trip. Only me and The Big D (the artist formerly known as ‘C’ who shall henceforth be known by the symbol D). We were, however, aided and abetted by a trusty duo of old friends from the Starav Club…Gerry and Allan. Old being the operative word.

We were supposed to have Webmaster Gav and friend-of-the-Rannoch Dick along with us…but Gav had to call off as he was in the middle of high finance negotiations to buy a 50 bedroom mansion and estate in the Peoples Republic of Yorkshire. (I understand he intends to turn it into a Polish Workers Co-operative). Dick wasn’t doing any negotiations, he was just too out of his head on drugs and drink to notice whether the hell he was coming or going.

One thing though…..the call-off by Gav and Dick had increased the average age of the team from 53.67 to 57.5.  Surely proof positive that there is life in old dogs.

On arrival at Girona (laughingly referred to as Barcelona-Girona by those jolly craicsters at Ryanair) we had to sort out the car hire. D had already booked the car thinking there would be 4 of us, so I wondered if we would be the first ever to ask for a downgrade! In the end the Chevrolet we got was OK and we just accepted that. Gerry and Allan got themselves sorted and we exchanged directions to the shed which was in the Perpignan area in France about an hours drive to the north…..

….Allan – “Take the fist left after the big Chateau on the right after Perpignan and then follow the Cathar Towers which have been arranged in perfect alignment by the Albigensian Heretics to lead directly to Chez Daniela’s pension in Tautavel. Dead easy. You cannot go wrong. We’ll meet you there.”

It all seemed straightforward enough and off D and I went…….You guessed it. We missed the turn off at the Cathar Tower junction and continued north up the Merovingian autoroute towards Rome and certain death at the hands of the Inquisition. All was not lost though, and we managed a quick u-turn at a Languedoc Little Chef and got back on route to Tautavel.

It really is beautiful country round these parts. Gloriously extensive panoramas of colourful vineyards with verdant wooded glades redolent of lavender and garlic blossom. The pitter patter of frog’s legs abounds everywhere. Le mucus d’escargot is on every pathway. Stunning vistas interspersed with grandiose and dominating chateaux and Cathar battlements. The history and magnificence was almost tangible. In fact D was so moved he said…

“Not bad countryside round here…if it wasn’t for all these fucking grapes”

…and so to Tautavel. A spectacular little hamlet nestling amidst towering Cathar Towers perched atop pinnacles of limestone …..[OK that’s enough of that flowery descriptive shite. Ed.]. Our next problem was to find ‘Chez Danielas’. I asked some locals in a mixture of schoolboy French, dodgy Castilian Spanish with a bit of Catalan and Drumchapelese thrown in. We were directed to the other end of the village to a rather ramshackle hotel and restaurant, the first floor of which was a building site but on the plus side just round the side was a bustling bar with pool table.

Gerry and Allan had caught us up by now and all four of us went in and enquired after our room reservations.  We spoke to the barmaid who it has to be said had a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ about her….something of the gypsy peasant girl…something of the seductive flamenco dancer…her raven black hair cascading over  flawless olive skin….the big sexy gallic nose over moistened cherry red pouting lips…[OK that’s enough of that Mills and Boon romantic pish. Ed.]

‘Ahem’…..so anyway I was led upstairs by the barmaid……and……..had to help her carry a camp-bed into our room. Dead exciting so it was. The lads spent the rest of the night sampling the local biere and Allan even managed to locate a restaurant that was open and we went there and had a decent meal then returned back to Chez Daniela’s at around midnight.

Now you would think that in a tiny, sleepy village in the middle of nowhere in Southern France things would be quietening down by now. Oh no. All the local yoofs of the village started congregating for a pool and pernod session and the management really cranked up the volume on the MTV video machine and we had unbelieveably loud DOOF DOOF BOOMF BOOMF type music and a gyrating JayLo on the big screen to contend with. ‘Comme ci comme ca’. I guess.

And so to the climbing, right on the doorstep of Tautavel is Vingrau, an extensive limestone massif with hundreds of routes over several sectors. It looked superb, and we were champing at the bit to get on to it. Allan, who had been before, led us up to a sector where there were some good warm up routes….or so he said. He and Gerry (with previous knowledge and not an inconsiderable amount of experience) managed to get on to the only good V+ route on the crag. Me and D chose a 6a+ (foolishly, with no previous knowledge and a considerable amount of experience at making bad decisions). …

…so there I was on this 6a+….nothing but  desperately technical thin smears for my feet and sloping sidepulls for handholds… the last bolt was well below my feet….the next one was a long way off…..I feared for my life….”oh Daniela I may never see you again”…. the vastness of the wall around me and the possibility of a plummet filled me with sweat-laden dread…..I cranked on a tiny undercut nubbin and strained every sinew to do a reverse heelhook Egyptian before grabbing the second bolt and hanging on it. [OK that’s enough overexaggerated hardest-rock-move-in-the-world-type bollocks. Ed.]

Luckily, the routes round these parts are equipped with big juicy staple bolts. This enables one to thread the rope directly through lower-off and hence beat a safe retreat. Which I promptly did and then climbed the V+ that Gerry and Allan had started off on. The moral of this tale?…Do not attempt a route like that as your first route of the season and also that the climbing is bloody hard here. It is undergraded and there is a learning experience to undergo. Things did get better, however, and we did an excellent 6a followed by a 6a+ and another V+. So it seems there is indeed a learning process.

The following day was superb again weather-wise. D and I went up to a multi-pitch area of another sector of the crag and did an excellent 3 pitcher. This was followed up by another couple of ignominious failures, before we all went for a spot of lunch and a biere before heading to the Tautavel local crag Les Gorges for a final route.

That evening we went into the nearby town of Rivesalte just outside Perpignan to search for a restaurant. We found one….and who should be there?….only the lovely Daniela with her entourage of male suitors. It was either a bizarre coincidence or she was stalking one of us. Or all of us. Spooky.

Saturday. We awoke to wet weather. All the hills around us were clagged in and it was very overcast. I had brought with me a guide book I got from Wee Iain to an area to the north of Perpignan, on the coast at Narbonne called La Clape. We decided to go and catch a dose.

Sadly, and against all our expectations the weather deteriorated the closer to the coast we went. So we had to abandon La Clape and went into Perpignan for a quick look around. A fine city (if you like that sort of thing) with loads of Catalan influences etc., but it wasn’t really for me and  D, and we decided to drive up into the Ariege area in the Pyrenees a day ahead of schedule. We said our fond farewells to our Starav compatriots (scumbags) and got the guttie to the floor of the Chevvy and headed west.

Luckily, the weather improved as we approached the town of Foix, nestling in the shadow of the Pyrenees Orientale. Towering snow-capped mountain escarpments loomed over us and ….[Enough! Ed.] We had to dodge about a bit to find our accommodation, ‘La Forge’ a renovated old Smithy cottage being run by a young FEB couple, Graham and Christine. We arrived in nice weather around tea-time and asked Christine directions to the ‘nearest’ crag in the area, as we were hopeful to get a few routes in. Christine, who freely admitted to being a beginner in this climbing malarkey thought we meant ‘nearest’ as in the closet within driving distance. Whereas, what we really meant was ‘nearest’ as in a short walk-in to the crag . So what we ended up with was a short drive of about 10Km back to the outskirts of Foix followed by a walk-in of about 30 minute up-a-bloody-hill to a very pleasant but small limestone crag called Arabaux. It was like a 2 and a half hour drive followed by a 30 minute hike uphill to a French version of Craigmore, albeit without the midges and the rain. We had to laugh (eventually) and got about 5 micro-routes in the bag. All in magnificent surroundings it has to be said.

Back at the shed, we indulged in more traditional hotrock activities, i.e, dossing around drinking cheapo supermarket biere and spouting nonsense.. Ahhhh….this was more like it. Graham had loads of info on all the local crags etc and we planned for a big multi-pitcher the following day on the romantically named ‘Pilier de Cathares’ at Calames. What we had forgotten, however, was that the following day was Sunday, i.e. still the weekend….and we were in for a shock.

We got  to the parking area around mid-morning and after a bit of faffing around and  getting some directions from a French lady in her dressing gown (we must have walked past her bedroom umpteen times looking for the path to the crag) we got on the right path to the crag. As we approached we could see more, and more, and more climbers. It was like a Lakes crag on a bank holiday weekend, and our target route had a queue on it already, with umpteen other parties on most of the other multi-pitch routes. I quickly set up our ropes on a big single pitch route I had spied out and set up that instead.  It was actually very good, but again quite hard for the grade at 6a+, and by the time I descended a good looking 5 pitch route just nearby had become clear, with the party on it already about 2-3 pitches up. So D and I set up it.

What we didn’t realise was there was a rather devious party of 3 frogs…er….French climbers who started up a route 3 bolt lines along from us and were doing a diagonal rising traverse to nip in ahead of us on our route. Fucking typical frog tactics. I’ve come across it on a few occasions before, they really are the most unscrupulous amoral bunch of merdes on the world’s crags. [Steady on Al, they’re not that bad. Ed.] Anyhow, we JUST managed to head them off and D used his recently acquired new ‘people skills’ to explain the situation to them in no uncertain terms, and thus any unpleasantness was avoided.

The route itself was pleasant enough, a fair bit of vegetation about as you may expect on these big faces but there was some excellent rock also. What also was good was that we ended up on top of the hill at nice wee ridge section leading to a ruined Cathar Tower….which was interesting.

We had another night on the piss…er…I mean in friendly conversation with some other FEB guests and Graham recommended a visit to the granite crags of Auzat, just a couple of valleys to the south about 30 minutes drive away.  To say we were sceptical was understatement, neither Δ or myself had climbed bolted granite before and had scary thoughts of big smooth slabs with jamming up elephant’s bums all over the place. Scary.

…but we went anyway , and were very pleasantly surprised. It was a superb crag, great for  the middle grades, sunny but with lots of shade at the bottom and very well bolted. Result!...and we had a cracking day doing around 8 routes including some of the best of the week so far. In fact we liked it so much we went back the following day, which was our last climbing day.

Ariege in particular was a great area and I’d certainly be keen to go back. But we need to get more of the Rannoch out there to get the average age down a bit.                                

Big Al, May 2006