This was the 8th BMC Gower Festival, but the first time that BMSCMC has been involved, as far as we are aware. It will certainly not be the last, as we had a great time and plan to be back next year. In addition, we hope to organise a separate club trip to Gower next summer.
Friday 16th: We arrived late afternoon, set up camp and headed straight over to Boiler Slabs, a non-tidal crag with a 20-minute walk in. We had our first taste of Gower’s steep, sharp limestone. As James McHaffie (“Caff”) said on Saturday, a “slab” is anything that’s less than vertical. For grit climbers, the steepness of the Diffs and VDiffs was exciting (or daunting, depending on your outlook). We finished climbing as the sun set over Worms Head and the full moon rose in the east.
Saturday 17th: The campsite filled up overnight and we woke to the smell of bacon from the BMC breakfast tent. About 50 people attended, with several locals from Swansea. There were daily sessions for young climbers, with the BMC Youth Officer, Caff, running Saturday’s course at Three Cliffs. Another mixed group signed up for an “Introduction to Sea Cliffs” session in Falls Bay. As veterans of the BMSCMC 2016 Lundy trip, we felt confident and headed off to Tor Bay and Gower’s longest climb, the East Ridge of Great Tor. This gets grades from VDiff to HS and is 73m (4 pitches). We reckoned our route, keeping mainly to the seaward edge, came out around Severe. The views were amazing, from Oxwich Bay in the west to Three Cliffs and beyond in the east. The North Devon coast and Lundy form the horizon out to sea. All day, a stream of charity walkers passed by on the beach below us. We walked across the beach to Little Tor and bagged two more routes before heading back for the evening’s entertainment.
Everyone met up at the Monksland pub at Scurlage. James McHaffie’s talk and slides described his life of climbing from his first Lakes experience with his dad to more recent exploits on hard routes in the UK and, especially, Yosemite. Dave asked him if he had a favourite route: “Troutdale Pinnacle” climbed many times with his dad. Definitely on our list for the near future. In 2014, Caff soloed 100 Lakes Extremes in a day. His plan for 2017 is to repeat this in North Wales. You heard it here first!
The BMSCMC quiz team came a creditable 3rd equal in the climbing pub quiz, beating the local BMC organisers by 1 point. This owed much to Dave’s detailed knowledge of Wainrights and Andrew spending far too much time on the UKC website.
Sunday 18th: Another sunny morning, and we headed over to Three Cliffs. Dave was delighted to lead a true “Mild Mod” before we hit a couple of starred slabs.
We aim to return to Gower for next year’s festival and will post the date as soon as we have it. In addition, as mentioned above, we hope to run a BMSCMC trip earlier in the summer. We saw lots of families out at the crags. Climbing off the beach means that non-climbers can sunbathe and picnic while the climbers head up the routes. All grades of climb are well represented, from Mild Mod to big E numbers, and even sport routes down to f3+. There’s something for everyone!
