Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau, also knows as "Font" is one of the most loved and possibly famous bouldering sites in Europe. It's south of Paris (in France(in case there are any Americans reading this(gotta love racial stereotyping))) and is pretty much a town near a forest containing really, really big boulders. Me, Rebecca and David drove there from England in about 6 hours on a Sunday morning, so when we arrived and set up our tent we got a bit of climbing in before sunset. The travel distance between our campsite and the bouldering areas is easily done by car, but it might take you a little while if you're on foot.

I learned a lot about climbing in the 4 days I was there. First off, I have some natural ability. Some of the moves I do to get myself up routes are a lot more advanced than they should be considering how little I've climbed. Apparently certain things climbers have to learn to do come naturally to me. That's pretty cool, coming from people who have climbed for 4 years longer than I have. Some of the routes I did with David and Rebecca really, really surprised them. I remember one route that David was working on for about 15 minutes. After he worked it out and did the climb, I completed it 5 minutes later. Rebecca (mostly because of her height I'm sure) couldn't do it. That particular route didn't require a lot of strength, but what it did require was fluid movement and balance and weight distribution on a very small amount of rock. I didn't have a lot of experience with this type of climb but it seemed, once I knew how to do it, quite easy.
Originally I was all about powerful moves that required a lot of arm strength. I've always been pretty strong naturally, because I've got the same build as my father, so I've always felt comfortable pulling myself up something with pure strength, will and determination rather than careful planning, balance, poise and grace. But after a few of these routes, powerful or "pumpy" ones seem less and less fun to do and impossible for a beginner like me to sustain such physical activity for a whole day. So we started looking for other types of routes, described to me as "crimpy" - These are so much fun and so scary. When you're 6ft in the air and all you have is an outcrop of rock an inch wide and 3mm deep to stand on while you're basically spread-eagled, you have to be calm and slow and good at shifting your weight. If you had a good hold it doesn't seem nearly as worrying. I did a route like this after working at it for a good 15 minutes. I tried it after David, but the position his route put me in was impossible for me to shift my weight onto my other foot. After Rebecca attempted it, she worked out a new position for my left food which would enable me to shift my weight, blah blah blah. So after that bam, just did a (for me) really fucking hard, flat route that when you look at seems impossible to climb.

Fontainebleau is full of routes that will test beginners to professionals, and I can't wait to go back. Pretty much love french bread and cured sausage and cheese for lunch too, mmm.. So yeah, I'm now hooked. Can't wait to get back to the walls in London Bridge and go do some crimpy climbs that I avoided before. I'm looking forward to writing down what I learn, what I find interesting, and what is now my Official New Hobby. After these massive paragraphs I don't think the posts are going to be as long. There's a lot more detail that could go into these paragraphs too but it's pointless really. I'll do a round-up of what I've learned already in my next post.

Peace out, no-one!