Daddy and me, we left Friday afternoon at 3 pm. It took us two hours to Héllo’s place. When we arrived, we had a nice bowl of soup and a toasted ham and cheese sandwich. All ready and packed, we started our long drive. The drive tired use all out. We arrived the following day around noon. This did not mean that we could take it easy. Oh no no. “Pack your climbing bag and climb” even though daddy was so tired, he wanted us to climb. We didn’t do anything big, so it won’t be necessary telling you. But we did go looking for some nice routes. That day, we climbed on “La Baleine.” It’s a nice wall in the shape of a whale. To Saint-Léger I had only been once and that was with Team Hungaria. It was a fun holiday too. At that time, Liselotte and I were the only ones from Klimax. The most amazing thing is that the road is above the rocks, and also the parking, which means that we need to walk down to go to the rocks.
The night we arrived, Héllo and I went to the river to wash ourselves. We found a nice spot with big rocks beside the river. The rocks were really smooth, so that made it easy to walk on bare feet. It was cold, in our bikinis, and the water made it freezing. We had to force ourselves to wet us. It was a nice spot and it was a peaceful place. Perfect as a bathroom (without a toilet).
Saint-Léger is so small, that in a two minute walk, we saw the whole village. There are only nice old houses in the village. There was also an old lady with a little black dog. The lady told a whole story about how she had got her dog and she repeated everything she said 3 times. And then the next day she asked: “Have we already met?”
Every two days we had a rest day. During that day we didn’t do much. We visited a castle which we couldn‘t enter, but we found some pomegranates to eat. The last day just before we would hit the road, I said to daddy that we had to get more of these for Iris, my younger sister, who stayed at home.
The first 2 days we climbed till 7c+ and worked in 8a. The 7c+ was “Le chant des Baleines.” It was difficult at the end. The 8a was “La Girafe”. It’s a long route with 1 crux, then comes a long technical part. The route is 35 meters long. In the first part before the crux is a small cave with a toy giraffe in it. Only the giraffe was white. I think it had once been yellow with brown, but the sun has taken away its colour. The route has a vertical part, just after the crux and there you can rest a long time. Héllo worked also in this route, but could not get on the vertical part. I did it by the 4th or 5th day. It was the same day that Héllo climbed her 7c+.
During our second rest day we visited Mont Ventoux. The wind was really cold, but on the other side it blew less strong. We ate the pomegranate, played cards and had a brambleberry pie.
The next day we went to another crag. There, we had set our eyes on another 8a and 7c for Héllo to do. We tried it but we didn’t have enough time to finish this project.
Celine