Painting of MFC

This piece features a slice of vanilla cheesecake, a favourite dish shared by myself and MFC. I get the cheesecake bit and she gets the biscuit base. Neither of us like the other's bit so we are a cheesecake-sharing perfect match.

The only trouble with our glorious friendship is that MFC now feels entitled to jump up on outside tables and help herself to other people's lunch, and is now often found wandering into the house.

Crabfest

On the August bank holiday weekend, UNUMC climbers and friends from all over the country descended on Portland for the first ever and long-anticipated Crabfest!

 

Crabfest is a deep water soloing trip and was invented by Chivers. The weather was as follows:

Friday - rubbish

Saturday - rubbish

Sunday - amazing sunshine yet windy

Monday - rubbish

 

For this reason a lot of people who were going to come along didn't and elected instead to watch a lot of tv, however we still had a very impressive turnout of 20ish people! And it was awesome.

 

We camped at the White Horse Farm campsite in Osmington on the mainland. Or rather, glamped. Zappa and I brought with us a big marquee so that we could all be civilised. When we turned up on Saturday afternoon (oh come on, look at the weather) we thought, hm, let's take advantage of the fact that it's only drizzling and blowing a slight gale and put the marquee up, and of course after unloading it and getting started it hosed it down and we got soaked. It was actually pretty fun.

 

Zappa with his new waterproof case for his camera - the Dicpac. With the white horse in the background. It looks like a fake, that White Horse, I mean for a start it's not white and since when did the ancients put riders with riding hats on their white horses? In fact let's put this straight, I will google it. I bet it was put there in the last hundred years.

Oh ok well here's the Wikipedia article on it:

The Osmington White Horse is a hill figure sculpted in 1808 into the limestone Osmington hill just north of Weymouth called the South Dorset Downs, within the parish of Osmington.^[1]

The figure is of King George III, who regularly visited Weymouth, and made it 'the first resort', riding on his horse, and can be seen for miles around. It is 280 feet long and 323 feet high in size and is best viewed from the A353 road.

There is a legend that King George was offended that the figure was riding out of Weymouth — a sign that he was not welcome — and never returned.^{[citation needed]}

The television show Challenge Anneka restored the horse in 1989. However, the project was undertaken too quickly and some errors were made.^[2] A project to restore the white horse is underway.^[3]

In August 2011 pranksters added a 'horn' made from plastic sheeting to make the horse resemble
 a Unicorn.^[4]
The Osmington White Horse is the only figure that is a case of both leucippotomy and gigantotomy

Well there you go.

I had been commisioned to make a Crabfest flag and it was met with a very warm reception to the extent that it was carried round on a long pole wherever we went. It was even present and flying over our barbeque circle time in the evenings.

On Sunday the climbing and hilarity commenced.

 Scott experiencing the occupational hazards of a DWSer.

 

Stubie trying a dyno

Me and Aussie Kate's washpig who sadly got left behind when she and Jake left for Europe, so I thought I'd take it on a trip with me.

 

Zappa and Wil, and Caz up the top who looks like she's going to dive in like an olympic swimmer.

 

 On Sunday night it was dressing up night, the theme being aquatic.(look there's the Crabfest flag!) Adam, Zappa and Joey had to pay the price of not bothering to bring a costume by having to wear bikinis. No, you don't want to see the photos of Zappa.

I didn't have a tripod but I had to include this photo anyway. The marquee at night, filled with climbers, candles and port. Much merriment was had.

 

Does it get better than this? I mean really?

 

Lulworth Adventures with the Chiverses

I'm in Hampshire with Zappa and family, and we got a call from Chivers saying he and Alice were somewhere near Swannage, Dorset and that we should come and have a deep water soloing day.

Deep water soloing is climbing above water without ropes, based on the concept that if you fall off you just fall into nice, safe, soft, deep water. Enthusiasts have taken it further by grading it on how true this idea actually is for the route, with S grades:

S0 - lots of deep water beneath you, perfectly safe (providing you can swim)
S1 - there might be the odd boulder and/or shallow bits you might want to watch out for
S2 - you should probably only do it at high tide, and pick your landing site carefully when you suddenly loose your footing and plummet downwards
S3 - don't fall off because you will almost definitely die.

We only do S0. Otherwise how is it fun? Anyway. Off we went to Lulworth cove, armed with chalk (for grip), a barbeque, an inflatable kayak and lots of clothes. It was blowing a gale and the sea was pretty choppy. I elected to be photographer.

The rock was doing crazy things. Just cos I hated geography doesn't mean I'm not completely amazed by stuff like this.

A brief sunny moment.  

The others decided to do a traverse all the way around the block on the right hand side of the cave, coming through the cave from the other side. Zappa did a recce of the other side in the kayak. He fell out immediately and I was laughing so hard I completely failed to take a picture.

Off they went, merrily, and I waited in line with the cave to get some good shots of them coming through the cave....

...err and they came back round the same way, looking very wet.



 They'd got halfway round and a big wave had rolled up. Zappa saw it and climbed higher, but Tom and Alice got drenched! Alice's legs actually got swept to the side and she somehow managed to cling onto two little crimpey holds to stop herself being washed down the rock face.

They decided to just stick to playing in the cave.

Joker.

Zappa comes off!

Zappa and I decided to go for a ride in the kayak so I could see the other side of the rock thingy. I don't know why I didn't grasp how rough the sea was going to be, I could see the waves coming through the cave the whole time and my friends had nearly gotten swept away, but it came as a terrifying surprise. It was ridiculous! I may have just screamed the entire time like some complete girl, couldn't help it. The sea was grey and white and churning, huge rocks would suddenly surface like whales right beside us - I was absolutely terrified! I really thought we'd soon be swimming. To get back through the cave we had to scoot alongside the horrible sometimes-submerged whale rock otherwise we'd miss the entrance. We got through and then a big wave came and dumped us on the rocks of the beach, quite conveniently really, it couldn't have been any luckier. I stopped screaming and proclaimed it enormous fun.