The story of four members of the Rannoch on a sojourn into the heart of Aragon [the region of Spain not the Byres Road pub] in search of their personal holy grails; hot rock, cheap cervesa, a suntan, insect bites, a dose of the skitters, a sore back, and not to be the ‘diddy’ of the team.

…….What is it with car-hire companies and music systems? In Vegas we all took tapes and we got a car with a CD player. For this trip, we took CD’s after being assured of a car with a CD player…you guessed it…we got a tape-player. On the next trip I’m going to bring tapes, CD’s, MP3’s, mini-disks, cartridges, LP’s, EP’s, 12" singles, 78’s, phonographs, smoked-drums, and a wee dog with a big trumpet.

…And EasyJet?…EasyJet?!….more like ‘Fucken-quite-expensive-with-a-lot-of-hanging-around-airports-Jet….yeah, nice one Stelios, you fat Greek twat.

We got the late-late show on the road and spent the first night at a hotel outside Llerida. The place was full of the cream of Europe’s cycling fraternity taking part in the Tour of Aragon…there were some big names in cycling, the biggest of which has to be Jamolodhin Abdoujhaparov, I asked for his autograph, but my bit of paper wasn’t long enough.

After taking full advantage of the all-you-can-eat breakfast we set off for our first climbing destination, La Noguere, a bit to the north of Llerida. We stopped off at a village Cubells to book into the salubrious Hostal Roma, and at 16 Euros per night it was much more acceptable to me on my rather frugal accomodation budget than the 45 Euros at the previous hotel. From here it was a short hop to the climbing, we chose a roadside crag at Camarasa for starters, [the locals have a name for this place…which translates to "Quite good weather Mountain but it can get thundery later"]. We did a handful of pleasant V’s, V+’s and a 6b+ pumpy wall which was great. All the while we could hear thunder approaching….[the visitors have a name for this place…"Fucksake man there’s the thunder lets get tae fuck outta here"] While the shower dried up we drove to the nearby Cresta de Conills, an impressive rock-fin above the village, where we did another route before being showered off again. We then went up the mountain pass a bit to the Terredets crag, an impressive wall with many multi-pitch routes, but luckily for us though there was a roadside classic just gagging to be done.

On then second day, after an abortive attempt at climbing on an abortion of a crag ‘Sector Sack-of-kack’ [sandbag-city, poorly bolted and scary, crag 2 lads 0, bad crag-choice Colin], we returned to the Cresta and cleaned up everything from V+ to 6a+. Excellent climbing and superb weather.

On a historical note, we saw with interest that the Romans had been active in the area, building roads and bridges etc….and also on the climbing front…because there was definitely a bolt from Roman times on one of the routes we did at the Cresta, in fact JD reckoned it was "a bit of Agrippa".

La Noguere is really an area for the big-route trad climber, and not for sporty bolt-clippers like us, so we upped-camp and beat it down to the Morata and Jaraba areas a couple of hours drive SW. We based ourselves just outside Calatayud, at the Hostal Marivella.

Morata is a very extensive and beautiful area on the outskirts of the village Morata de Jalon and accessible by a fairly mental dirt-track. [The locals have a name for this place…"Muy Bueno Tiempo Muntanya", no need to translate that methinks] We had to ‘rack-up’ the suspension on our Citroen Xantia to 4WD proportions to cope with it, and we got there shaken and slightly stirred.

The ‘Gran Placa’ looked fantastic and we headed straight for it. The climbing here is just superb, with slightly off-vertical to steep-slabby walls with pockets and edges, and well supplied with new bolts. The star system goes up to ***** for the very best quality routes, [usually only one of these in the whole area]. Most of the routes we were doing were ***, and the 6a’s were as good as any we’ve done in Spain. Grading-wise the routes were pretty hard, we reckoned you add a half-grade to a full grade in some cases to be more accurate. Most of the V+’s would be pretty solid E1 5b back home. We had 3 days in total here and all the routes were top class, the big ****6a+ being particularly memorable, I just wish I could remember the name! The long [28m] ***6a+ pitches on the ‘Tunnel Walls’ were really excellent.

Jaraba was about 45 mins drive further SW, and the amount of rock around is just gobsmacking. Once again it’s a very scenic landscape [the locals have a name for this place…"Muy Mental Superscorcio Muntanya y Placa Dry-roasted"], and the climbing is just top-drawer. There are loads of ***6a’s, some ****6a/6a+ stuff and at least one *****6b, which was sensational [even with a rest!]. Definitely a place to go back to!

The timing of Stefan’s [‘Der Gruntmeister’] flight back to Phlegmland meant we had to head back towards Barcelona for the final 2 days. We dossed at the old favoutite La Mussara refugio, for a couple of nights, and at 4.3Euros per night it hasn’t exactly gone up much in the last few years! We ate, drank and played pool at the Hotel Gayboy in Alcover. Some readers may remember the ‘Barman al Dente’ the guy with the unfortunate dented head and his ‘non-identical’ twin brother from previous visits. He certainly remembered us, and our paltry tips!!

We had a day climbing at Vilanova de Prades, Out-of-town crag [the locals have a name for this place…"Don’t climb here the bastardo landowner has bashed-in the first bolts and removed some of the lower-offs Muntanya"] and Arboli before despatching ‘the Muscles from Brussels’ back to from whence he came.

Our final day, as a threesome, was at Lo Sotterani, bagging such classics as Elegosentrick and The Talker Bom, and putting the final touches to the tan. I think JD enjoyed the latter so much that he may now abandon such foolish talk of this being his ‘Last Sojourn to Hotrock Espana’.

All in all, another cracking trip. If a little quiet on the cervesa-front, probably due to the low attendence levels. [School Report….Rannoch – "Must do Better"]. Morata and Jaraba are definitely worth a visit, especially for those in the middle-grade and Scottish VS bracket.

Hasta la vista baby. I’ll be back.

Arnold