Andy Saxby and I had originally planned to spend the weekend of July 10/11th climbing in Scotland, but a dreadful weather forecast persuaded us to change our plans at the last minute. As a result we drove to Ynys Ettws on Friday night and awoke on Saturday to extremely heavy rain and swollen rivers. The prospects of rock climbing that day seemed remote, but we first called into Eric’s café for morning coffee before driving over to Anglesey with a sense of growing resignation. Nevertheless, Castell Helen turned out to be windy but dry, so we followed our next cuppa with an ascent of Lighthouse Arete (VS 4c***), before retreating back to the hut as the weather threatened further rain.

On Sunday we returned to Gogarth hoping that the tides would allow us early access to Scavenger (HVS 5a***) on the Main Cliff area, but our access would be blocked until 5pm so we settled for ‘warming up’ on Central Line (HVS 4c, 5a**) as it remained an ambition of Andy’s. I led the first damp agricultural pitch before Andy made a valiant attempt at the second. Alas, he was defeated by upper crux section, so after the inevitable messing around with ropes I eventually led through to the top. We agreed that we were definitely warmed up, but that it was now far too late to attempt Scavenger!