When I was in Fontainebleau I went bouldering. "Bouldering? Surely you went rock climbing?" I hear the more observant of you cry1. It should be explained that bouldering is a form of rock climbing that involves climbing up smaller rocks (averaging between 15ft / 5 metres and 25ft / 8 metres high) and does without all the large amounts of gear that proper rock climbing needs. "So it's like rock climbing for people who can't stand heights?" Not really as 8 metres is still a long way to fall without a harness and rope and some problems (the name for a route up a boulder) are significantly higher (Ladies and Gentlemen, coming in at 40ft Le Dame Jouanne). The emphasis is very much on technique though, so you'll get people throwing themselves at the same problem again and again untill they crack it. Practice makes perfect and all. It doesn't help that all problems are graded from 1 (which around the level of stepping on a stone) to 8b+ (which is around the level of stepping on a stone 10ft up in the air by ways of a crack the size of a piece of paper). "So bouldering is like rock climbing for people who are really competitive and have no imagination?" Well, yes. But it's here where the French have got something completely right. Given fifteen hundred square kilometres of forest littered with thousands upon thousands of boulders they didn't just go around and place markers on all the ones that had tough problems on them. Rather they painted arrows on the rocks to link up groups of problems to make long circuits all graded from yellow (do not attempt if you have to use a wheelchair all the time) to white (do not attempt if you can't stick on a glass wall by sheer force of will). The best of these circuits involve your feet never touching the ground, and getting from one problem to another can be more entertaining than the actual climb.
The reason I'm telling you all this is to explain why I spent the best part of Wednesday morning alternating my cursing between 'that damn rock' and 'those damn French morons who set this damn circuit'. It was a VERY HARD PROBLEM and when I got to the top I didn't appreciate finding a little orange arrow telling me that hole at my feet was where I was heading next.
(8) The Space Between All Things - Idlewild
(m) Stoobs
unless you go the other way. It goes Yellow, Orange, Blue, Red, Black, White with random other colours thrown in along the way too. Okay so that's not the most logical order but hey, they're French.
This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.
Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.
This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.
Paul
All the way from yellow to white? surely there aren't many colours between those two?