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?

 

So we went camping! It was good. We forgot our ready-cooked spag bol so had bacon and eggs for supper instead. The mozzie net worked and we found a campsite right by the beach, with big trees for shade.

Trouble was, the surf was small and completely blown out, so the next day instead of surfing we carried on down to Bellingen, stopping at all the surf beaches en route (seven) to check them out for future reference. Unfortunately, as the East Coast is just an east coast, the surf was the same the whole way. We eventually came to Diggers Beach at Coff’s Harbour, supposed to be the premium break, which was slightly less blown out, so Zappa went and had a go and I stayed to crochet on the beach.

This man called Matt started talking to me, he’d been surfing for decades like Ray, and we talked about surfing and stuff. Eventually I asked if he knew of any places people climbed in the area. He said he usually went to a secret little cove round the corner to collect shells to make artworks with them, and there’s a bit of a downclimb, but since he got caught climbing back up when a storm broke he’s had a bit of a fear factor about it, which was a shame because he loved going there. He said it just brought it home how if he fell, no one know. I said he should take a phone with him, and he agreed, but he wasn’t sure if he’d even go there anymore now. I said ‘Why don’t we go there now? It’ll be fine with two of us.’ He came round to the idea and off we went, after telling Zappa where we were going.

It was such a cute little cove, it reminded me of a mini version of that bit of Bosigran on the left as you do the walk-in. Climbers might know what I mean.

The wall on the left looks FUN - we might come back and climb it soon. Looks like a v.diff or a severe.

And there were shells everywhere! We collected loads and chatted away. He said it was really nice to share his hobby with someone else. I really enjoyed it too – there’s something so basic about the desire to collect shells you don’t really have an explanation for it.

Matt climbing back up. He said he'd be a lot happier doing it now he'd gone and done it. And he promised to take his phone.

I got sunburnt for the first time in the 5 months we’ve been here! So annoyed with myself. Pretty good going though I suppose.

Bits of shell

We’ve come back to Bello to find mould covering everything, the sofa seems to have come off worst. Sharron (who lives above us) said that she had to demould everything with all the damp floody weather and it would come back after a week. Blergh. But that’s easy to deal with – we turned over the sofa cushions to assess the damage and these bugs started crawling out of it – I think they look like bedbugs (after watching a program on pest control people – as you do), except they look a lot paler. Anyway that is NASTY and we set off a pest control nasty chemical fumes bomb in there, so we are currently sitting in the front garden with all our belongings sat around everywhere, including the massive supermarket shop we just did. Luckily we have a 3 way fridge so it is happily cooling away on gas beside me.

 Zappa is asleep! Bless him. We’ve waited an hour and a half and we’ve only got another half an hour before we’re allowed to go in and open all the windows, then after another half an hour we can move back in. We don’t know if it’ll kill the bedbugs but we needed to bomb the place for cockroaches anyway.

Good news: we’ve been asked to housesit again for Quigley and Jean, and this time we get the dog in with the deal! Score. They have some more work for Zappa to do so hopefully two birds with one stone, although Sharron’s just said a big storm is forecast for the next week. Not again…….

I’m writing this on Microsoft Word but will hopefully make a stop in at the library tomorrow to post it. Ahhhhhhh it feels so good to be back in Bello, even if it contains mould and bedbugs. This feels like it has been quite a boring post but it’s been something to keep me entertained while we’re waiting. I suppose being led to a secluded beach by a random man I just met was exciting. It’s ok Mum! I didn’t get abducted so that’s fine right?

We're Going Camping

We're off to Bello again to get some more work, but on the way we're finally going to do some camping! Yesterday we made a shelter for shade and rainproofness - we really need the back door to be open all the time we're camping for precious airflow! It was SO HOT when we were doing this, we had to jump in the swimming pool 3 times just to cool down! We're finally getting a taste of Australian summer.

Dress rehearsal in Jenny and Ray's garden.

Mozzie net

So off we go! We'll tell you how it goes in a few days when I make my pilgrimage to Bellingen library for the internet.