Personally, for me, Millstone is not a venue for your first ever trad lead. It is a place where you can challenge yourself at any level you currently are in your climbing career. To me, there is plenty there that I want to do but when you look at the walls themselves, they look intimidating and you just know straight away that you can’t rest about on a lot of the moves.
With a chance of rain in the are we have did our best to get on the rock as soon as we got on the crag. With my lead being first, I went straight on Covent Garden a 2 star VS 4b 2 pitch climb. It was quite nice but I did get stuck right before the first belay. I basically through a small ledge was my belay point so I tried my best to find somewhere to set it up. Unfortunately beside a tree that was out of reach, there was nothing. I went up to the step higher and it was cleared to me that this was the ledge for the belay 🙂 It’s so big you wouldn’t miss it. I put one cam in a crack right in front me, and a sling on a stable rock on the right.
The second part of the climb looks a bit sketchy but it’s ok. You start with high left foot (at least I did) and pull towards the aerate. There is 2 gear placements right in the middle f the second pitch and just before the final move over to the second belay. It is a lovely route 🙂 Bit windy at the top in bad weather so best to carry a windproof.
We then went onto The Mall VS 4c three-star route, which is a corner climb on the London Wall area, lead by my climbing partner. It started to rain a bit while we were on it so I kept on slipping off as most handholds were soaked by the time I started to climb. After having our lunch while we waited for the rain to go away, we went onto my final lead of the day at the Cioch Bay area, climb called Eartha HS 4a two stars. It was very nice and a little bit tricky at the beginning as I could not get my feet in the right sequence. After like 8 minutes trying different moves, I found something that suited me and could get on with the rest of the climb. When I got to a small ledge, I then had to traverse right and up to continue with the climb, but since there was a lot of heather and other greenery on the way, I thought it will be safer for me to put some gear in before I started to go right. I didn’t fancy a fall mid-climb.
What I should have done is put some gear in, go right, put more gear in and then go back and take the first bit of gear out so that there is less rope drag. Overall the rope drag was not bad at all.
The top has a lovely belay point with loads space for gear as you can see below.
One very important thing to mention as well is …
IT’S HEATHER SEASON ❤
so lets appreciate the beautiful purple carpet that is slowly covering big parts of Peak District national park. This is definitely one of my favourite things to just stare at while I’m there and the flowers are blooming.
Climbing and Travel Adventures 