The Shifting Sands

The old city centre of Nuremburg on a drizzly morning After the best part of two weeks in Paris, my European work trip ended with a visit to the Siemens offices in Erlangen in Germany on a Friday.  Fortunately for me, Erlangen is just on the edge of the Frankenjura, a legendary climbing area which is home to the red point and Action Directe, the world’s first 9a. The main market square, a good place for a breakfast pretzel I had hoped that Jeremy would be able to join me but he was busy with a Buck’s party at Hossegor.  As Kate was in Australia with the girls and the temperatures in Dubai were touching 50 deg C, I decided that it was still worthwhile to check out the Frankenjura even though I didn’t have a climbing partner. Compared to the Fiat, a much more masculine Golf out front of the apartment in Wolfsberg and you can just one of the many crags in the Frankenjura in the distance After my meeting finished, I picked up ...

Fixin, by French standards it was a little hard to locate the routes and route finding on some was interesting I had two weeks work in Paris with my last meeting in Nuremburg on a Friday.  Kate and Ada were in Melbourne and Lucy was on the Gold Coast so I had two weekends free in Europe.  Needless to say, my thoughts turned to climbing. My first option was a return to Beaune, where the family and I had conducted an unsuccessful and very cold reconnaissance of the rock climbing during Easter the previous year. The problem with Europe is finding a climbing partner if Kate is not with me; however, I had recently discovered that one of the team working with me, Jeremy, was a keen climber.  So I suggested a weekend climbing trip to Bourgogne and made the necessary bookings a few weeks in advance. French countryside.  The view from a restaurant in Fixin while we were enjoying a post climb drink. As w...

The main square in Gigondas under grey skies Part Three of our Easter break in France, after Antibe, and   Chateauvert, saw us in the shadow of Mt Ventoux, north east of Avignon, in the village of Caromb.  My intent was to climb in the area of Montmirail while enjoying the countryside of Provence.   The area was much busier than Contignac and Chateauvert and it was dotted with hilltop villages.   It seemed that the higher you were the smaller and cuter were the towns. Ada finding somewhere to hide in Gigondas I was familiar with Mt Ventoux, as it had long been a famous climb on the big bike races like Paris-Nice and the Tour, but I was unaware of how popular cycling was in the area.   There were any number of well mapped cycle routes some flat and some very hilly.   We lost count of the groups we passed while driving and I wished that I had the Black Bullet (my road bike) with me. Every medium sized town seemed to have one or tw...