The Real Deal

The last six or so weeks have flown by in a blur of wheat fields filled with red poppies, limestone tufa caves, rest-day dips into cold aqua swim holes, afternoon thunder storms, scenic walks with mum, Spanish joviality, lazy mornings in the carpark waiting for shade, vulchers soaring overhead, and knee-bars. Rodellar deserves a blog entry of it’s own, but somehow, between all the climbing, resting, crocheting and socialising, I just haven’t had time to make use of the unusual dirt-bag luxury we had...wifi in the car park... and write a post. 

The many limestone tufa caves that fill the Valley below Rodellar, Spain. 

Mum the mountain goat.

One of the vulchers that stop off to check out Rodellar whilst on their flight path from Africa.

And now we are in France, driven from Spain by the ever increasing temperatures, and wet tufas from a week of persistent storms. After two days of driving we found ourselves in Ceuse.

Ceuse is almost perfect….it would be if you liked Goat’s cheese and had a way to exterminate flies. The limestone outcrop stands proudly at the top of the 2000m high mountain of Ceuse, sweeping out of the ground to form a perfect concave surface of pale yellow rock striped by the blue water streaks. The surrounding fields of lush green grasses dotted with an array of different wild flowers are the perfect foreground to the backdrop of the Alps, still speckled with the last of the winter snow. Down the road from the parking is a little goat farm where they make homemade French cheeses from the hand milked goats milk. Across the road is a picturesque little cottage, complete with a happy fat dog on the front step, and they sell hot chocolates where you get to add the cocoa yourself, it seems the French understand what a perfect hot chocolate is, I love it here!

The perfect walls of Ceuse.

The view from the crag.

The one-hour uphill walk to the cliff provides the perfect complimentary exercise to a day of climbing, and the make-up of the rock requires every climbing skill in the book, and all on the one route: power, technique, endurance and confidence, making it the perfect training ground for overall improvement. The barrelling shape of the wall usually means a climb begins on steep rock, with powerful moves through pockets, and gradually as the gradient eases, the holds become smaller until you find yourself on a technical slab, pumped, and run out. The bolting ethic here means the bolts are often placed sparsely (but generally safely), meaning you often find yourself facing a crux relatively high above the last bolt, calling on mental strength, which is equally as important as the physical. All of these features, as well as the renowned tough grading here, make Ceuse an ego crushing place, being both mentally and physically intense…it’s the real deal.

As evening falls, the last light hits the mountain opposite, Petit Ceuse, illuminating the white bounders against the smooth green grass, the Alps fading to blue in the distance. Nearly everyone at the crag pauses for a moment to admire the view, and think, as they do everyday, that there is nowhere on earth they’d rather be right now….until a rampage mosquitos relentlessly harass their faces. At least when the mosquitos come out, the flies begin to die down. For some reason there is an almost biblical proportioned plaque of flies here, and their favourite place to hang out seems to be in our van. They also like to rest on the rope while someone is climbing, making the grigri a fly mincer when the climber is being lowered off. But this scarcely detracts from the beauty of one of the best climbing destinations I’ve ever been to (on par with Cochamo, which coincidentally is also full of flies, at least the ones in Ceuse don’t bite)!

Petit Ceuse

Things I love about Spain

1. That you can buy a bottle of decent* wine for 80 cents

2. That you can buy wine in 5L plastic bottles direct from the winery

3. Climbing on Margalef pocketed limestone, such novelty value! 

4. That no body gets up before 9am, and few before 10am

5. The old Spaniards who congregate at some known social meeting point, usually the town square or in front of the church, to “socialise” (which actually looks like they just sit near each other and watch the colourful climbers pass by with a disgruntled expression of confusion and amusement)

6. The communal water fonts, often referred to as the Lion’s Heads, (which are another common meeting location of the oldies)    

The Lion and his beard (of slime)

7. The terraces that you stumble across in the most unlikely places, like when you think you’ve bush bashed and scrambled far away for a morning poo, only to arrive at a well constructed stone wall holding up a levelled field in the side of a mountain, that is likely to be a few thousand years old.

Terraces at Margalef, if you look closely you can see the stone walls at every level

8. The fact that no matter how tight our monthly budget becomes, we always manage to have a vast selection of olives, a type for every occasion. The little bitter ones as beer snacks, the big green ones for dinner, those of the “Receta Abuela” (Gransma’s Recipe) which have a curious flavour of cumin and citrus, and Mick’s favourite – the “Bombas”, which the Olive man assured us would blow his head off, and was slightly disappointed when Mick didn’t collapse to the ground wheezing but casually bought a tub full.

9. The ancient stone towns full of epic history, like Siurana, where they say the Moorish Queen road her horse out through the castle window and over the cliff to commit suicide when the town was falling to the Christians. 

Siurana

Siurana after the storm

 10. Climbing in Siurana. This was kind of a love-hate point, beautiful scenery, nasty crimps, from which my skin still hasn't recovered.

*It is possible that my judgement of decent wine has degraded somewhat over the last few months

Starting to feel like home

After just over two weeks, sleepy sunny little Chulilla is starting to feel like home. 

From the 1st of April, which must mark the start of a season, the countryside has jumped to life. All the old farmers are out on their tractors ploughing the terraced fields around their olive trees. This is a picture of my favourite olive tree, so large and old it's limbs are supported by poles. 

Most of the population in the town are senior citizens, as old as their olive trees, and they are starting exchange pleasantries with us in the street (well I assume that’s what’s happening when the grunt incomprehensibly and wave their walking sticks at me). We’ve also found the bakery, which is quite possibly a big mistake… they sell Nutella filled croissants for 70 cents. Hopefully this is compensated for by the wild asparagus that grows at the crag and is now an exciting addition to our diet of pasta red sauce.   

We’re also feeling a bit more at home on the rock here. Some of the limestone tufas, which have been seeping ever since the week of rain, are starting to dry out, making some of the more exceptional routes climbable. I have no photos to show of it yet though as I keep forgetting to take the camera when we go climbing! 

The van is also becoming more homely too, with the addition of a herb garden and some chickens (chickens sadly only in printed form, on the lino we got to cover the bench).

Amongst other home improvements (such as the removal of the floral curtain) the van is also now equipped with a clamshell sand pit as a bath tub, which fits perfectly in the floor space, and makes for a great steamy bath time.    

And lastly, a couple of other shots...

Morning view.

Dinner time.

We made it to paradise...

...and now it's raining!

After 2 days of driving through France (which should have taken much less but for our efforts to avoid all toll roads, resulting in having to go through a round-a-bout every 800m or so), we popped out of the tunnel through the Pyrenees into Spain!

First stop: Chulilla, a beautiful little Spanish village perched on a ridge between canons of endless limestone. 

Before the rain... 

Now it's quite cold and wet, even the olive oil is solidifying.

And here's a little photo of the Van interior after the makeover.