The Portway Lifestyle Centre (where the climb took place) is a fantastic new facility for the whole community and centre of excellence for people with disabilities. In the picture above you can see see the 8-10 meter feature wall on the left. I did most of my climbing on this as its closest to rock climbing and scrambling. Which I've been known to do from time to time on my hill walks. The other wall is a full on 12 meter climbing wall which we used for traversing (going around rather up). This was far harder than the vertical climb, in my opinion, unless your into bouldering. The other wall not shown was a 12 meter vertical wall with auto belays. These don't require someone on the other end of the rope. It's automatically taken in as you climb and released to lower you safely back down when you let go of the wall.
The event attracted a lot of local media coverage, with both BBC local radio and Midlands Today local TV news covering the event. Fortunately for me, most of the footage seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor, with only a few brief clips being show. As the skin hugging Lycra bottoms I was wearing don't show me in the most flattering light! Although apart from my fashion sense I appear to have emerged unscathed, other that a bruised knee and grazed elbow. I might even do a hill walk or scramble to wind down this weekend.
Meanwhile back on the writing front I'm now just over half-way through the re-edit of Exiles. So hopefully a new version minus typos and grammatical faux-pars will be released shortly. I'm playing around with three or four ideas at the moment and about 10,000 words in to one of the future projects listed on my website/blog, Planefall.
Blog Update
Just had a severe meowing too from the cat. Before sitting down to write the blog I fed her and let her out. Then, thinking she was back in, shut the door and put my ipod on, before sitting down to write my blog. So all the while I was typing away she was sitting outside the back door caterwauling to be let back in. Not sure what the cat equivalent of a dog house is but I'm in it!