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?