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Photos: Big G


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Chalky slopers and pinch


The north approach path will take you past one of the most peculiar garden features in N Wales; the sinister 'fisherman'

This month Big G finds a gem of a crag on Anglesey; a steep wall of compact rock that looks oh-so-good. Who will take up the gauntlet?

Dear NWB.com readers,
How often is there any useful info to be found in this monthly offering? Some would say never, but perhaps on this occasion...

It will take some conviction to go to GR 472 865; most boulderers following the northbound A5025 road around the ‘Energy Island’ of Anglesey will experience a sense of unease. It is, after all, not known for its bouldering, and mostly comprises dull, wet, Postman Pat-type agricultural terrain, interspersed with tips of mined spoil so poisonous nothing dares grow on them, even after hundreds of years. The scene is animated only by several score wind turbines flailing their limbs in what looks like and endless warm-up. Motionless sheep dot the fields like tiny fallen clouds. At late afternoon tree shadows advance as Celtic spears across the naked grassland. It has a kind of weird energy.

Into this landscape we must venture, to a remote and unpromising rocky clump (just north of the ruminant Mynydd Bodafon) where the lowest and only good portion shows itself, on close inspection, to be something of a sleeping dragon.
Get there by public footpath from Bodafon Isaf to the north or Brynrefail to the north east. Looks crap. Cross those boggy fields as a lightship crossing an oozing green sea of pessimism. Decorate yourself with bramble thorns and poxy bracken. (The druids made sacrifices - we've all got to - now get on with it.)
Just because there isn't anyone else there, doesn't mean to say that everyone else in the world is doing something better!

You will find the rock to be a quartzite re-mix of multi-various facets, featured with cracks and pockets. Solid, mostly clean, with a fair few distinguished ‘3 holds-and-your-out’ type problems in the mid to upper grades. Some traverses could gain a certain status.
At the large right hand end of the cliff, the landings are perfect, and at the left hand sector; a bit boggy.
The cliff faces north-west, and in exceptional circumstances gets the afternoon sun.
Our thoughts are with those who make a navigational error or do not have stout shoes...or are frightened of creepy wide open spaces.

What a game of hones

Love Big G

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