Finetarts Autumn Hot Rock Weekend 2005

(Al Scott: 4/11/05)

…oops sorry, that should read Finestrat, a bustling but picturesque village nestling in the shadow of the towering high-rise limestone splendour of the Puig Campana and only a few miles from the quaint olde worlde charm of the real Spain……Benidorm.

Colin had booked us into the Hotel La Plantacion, a kind of colonial palace with San Miguel on draught run by the husband and wife team of Dean and Angelina. Dean, an ex-pat Yank with a goatee, dodgy accent and colour co-ordinated leisure wear…and Angelina a flamboyantly friendly and sexy senora who did everything.

We were here on a four-day ‘smash & grab’ rock and alcohol raid. Why only 4 days?…because some of us didn’t have any more holidays left and so the concept of the Hot Rock Weekend was born, not exactly innovative I know, but it was new to the Rannoch at least. Also new to this trip was the presence of some old acquaintances from our good friends in The Starav Club…Gerry and Allan….though you could more accurately say ‘Gerry’ and ‘Atric’ because we worked out the average age for the six member team at over 53! It’s not often me and Riceboy are the youngsters of the team! Scary.

Picture: Gerry & Allan

And so to the first days cragging…we got to Sella at around 1pm, so we had been up for 10 hours already but were invigorated by the sight and feel of warm sunshine on perfect rock and a relatively quiet crag. Relatively quiet, that is, except for a big bunch of loud fat ex-pat FEB’s clambering all over the ‘Sector Just Up and Right from The Carpark’. So we rapidly went to the ‘Sector Just Down and Left of the Carpark’ and got stuck in to the superb climbing and caught some very welcome UV rays.

After a good session we headed back to the Shed when Colin and I noticed something a bit worrying…

*Colin noticed the fuel light was ON!…and
**I noticed we didn’t have any beer. Disastro!

1 *Hire Cars we have used in Spain usually give you a car full of fuel, which you then return full at the end. The Mickey Mouse outfit that this heap came from was one of the unusual companies that give you a car with about a gallon of fuel and you are then supposed to try and return the car as close to empty as you dare. The only problem was we hadn’t noticed this until now and faced the very real possibility of running out in the middle of nowhere.

2. **I like drinking lots of beer after a day on the crag.

We cunningly got out of this near catastrophic scenario by free-wheeling virtually all the way down from Sella to the garage on the outskirts of Benidorm, where I succeeded in purchasing some of the essential fluid…and we got some diesel as well.

The evening was spent drinking all the ‘Welcome Pack’ that the lovely Angelina had left us (it was supposed to last 3 nights) and then having a meal in the Hotel restaurant. I think even the epicurean Dave enjoyed it and we all crashed out having been on the go for around 22 hours. Getting on a bit you see….well especially the Starav contingent.

The following morning was another cracker, wall to wall sunshine, and possibly some of the heads were not quite so clear after the previous evening’s festivities! During a fine continental breakfast served by the lovely Angelina and her rather fetching daughter, we had a lengthy discussion about which crag to go to. We finally decided to go to Reconco back up in the Alicante region, which was about an hours drive away. We got there, and were surprised to get the whole crag to ourselves…well I suppose a half-hours walk in is a bit far for the young Spanish sport-rockers these days.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable day of hot rocking and the banter was flowing between the teams, and by late afternoon we were hot, knackered and out of drinking water….and it wasn’t long after someone mentioned “A cold beer sounds good!” then we gave it “Vamos muchachos!” and headed for the nearest cervesaria.

In the evening after a few more cold cervesas back at the shed, there was a split in the ranks. Gourmand Dave and the Starav Boys were happy to stay put in the hotel again for another meal. Colin, Riceboy and I were keener to venture into the Finetarts metropolis and check out the local bars, restaurants and points of local interest. We found a rather good little pizzeria in the main street complete with rickety table in the gutter outside where we could scoff, quaff and watch the world go by. We noticed a modern looking bar/club across the road and we gave it a try. To say this establishment was out of place in a small mountain village is extreme understatement! Loud electronic trance music, kaleidoscopic light show, scantily-clad and stunningly callipygean raven haired barmaids and an obviously mentally-retarded DJ. We felt a bit out of place….especially Colin with his chrome dome, stripy t-shirt, neckscarf and sock-and-sandal combo. Anyway we had a few beers before vamoosing up the street to the more traditional bar knee-deep in Fortuna cigarette-butts and tapas leftovers. We finished the night off by re-joining the lads back at the hotel for nightcaps.

We awoke on Sunday to a slightly cloudier day. Colin and I fancied going to Olta crag, near Calpe because it was a new crag for both of us, whilst the others were going back to Sella. Olta was a good choice as it gets lots of sun, has a stunning outlook and has a pretty good selection of routes including a route called Tai Chi (***6b+) which I was desperate to do after seeing the photograph in the new Rockfax guidebook. Only problem was I seemed to have developed a problem in my big toe….I had had minor niggles with it before but this appeared much worse and it was really lowping.

It couldn’t possibly be gout could it? I thought gout only affected port drinking cigar-smoking rich food guzzling old powffs in Victorian times?..and that hardly applies to finely-tuned athlete like me.! Anyway I took a couple of parcetamols and warmed up by following a couple of routes, albeit in a bit of discomfort.

The route itself was absolutely fantastic, one of the best I’ve ever done in Espana, a stunning climb up an arete with gob-smacking views all round. I had a very close thing to a fall on it when my foot (not the sore one) slipped off a wee hold but managed to cling on and ripped a huge flapper on my finger in the process. Colin said he could follow my bloodstains when he did it later. Brilliant.

On our last night we all went into Finetarts for a meal. We found a cosy wee restaurant down one of the back streets and esconced ourselves in there. After a few moments we noticed some very strange paintings and assorted artwork adorning the walls. They were all depicting various gayboy scenarios. Gasp! Had we stumbled into the sleazy cess pit of Finetarts Sodom and Gomorrah? Dunno, but I can say you will never have seen six blokes eat up quicker than we did that night. I was curious (and not how you may think) and asked the proprietor on the way out about the pictures and mentioned our concerns. He laughed and said that they had a monthly display of the work of local artists and this month just happened to be the local raving bender. I assured him we Scots were not homophobic and ran away.

On our final day we went to the nearby Toix seacliffs area near Calpe, a favourite haunt of previous trips. We managed to grab a couple of routes before there were some showers and before we knew it was time to get to the airport for our late afternoon flight.

All in all I’d say the new-fangled weekend trip had been a success. It’s great that you can squeeze in 4 days climbing and only use up 2 days holiday. There is already talk of a similar trip in late March, and I for one will be keen.

Any more takers?

Al Scott, 4/11/05