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postcards from Montpellier - France 6-Nov-2006 At 7:15:19 AM Garrath

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As the school holidays are about to end I thought I would pass this observation on. I took the kids to the local climbing gym. Cal (age 7) wanted more climbing practice for the real stuff and Sax (age 4) just wanted to hang about on the rope. After a couple of climbs, Cal turns to me and asks 'when can I lean to belay'. A bit to young and a bit to small was my line of thinking when low and behold the group of 8 kids (aged about 7 to 10 years) next to us are split into like sized pairs and handed Grigris!!! WTF I think! Urmm Cal I think I can teach you to belay Sax with my Grigri. (of course with dad tightly gripping the rope just to make sure.) Oh and Sax has certainly adopted French tactics - move a couple of holds, rest, move a few more, rest........

We've managed to climb at Le Clape and Thuarac so far. Le Clape has a great little cliff for kids, so after driving for an hour we walk in to see this particular cliff with ropes on every single climb!!!!! wot! We soon discover that within the next hour the place will be over run by about 40 kids. Thankfully an hour is all we need for our kids to enjoy themselves and luckily for us we were allowed to use any of the ropes

Today we spent a glorious day at Thuarac. Was only about 17 degrees but the cliff was in the sun all day. We spent our day sending any climb with a rating of about 5, our next visit will hopefully see me break into the 6's. The Kids both had a crack at a 4b. The only problem with Thuarac is some of the climbs involve a little skating on slippery limestone.

A non climbing visit to Le Guilhem le Desert had us salivating at the bit with the local cliffs but a visit to the tourism office informed us that climbing was now banned due to an accident. Though this didn't seem to bother a couple of climbers who really seemed to be enjoying their multipitch assault! oh well maybe under the cover of darkness.......