Loving Gower Life at present, the sun is out and surf is up. This means that both of my favorite passtimes have been great over the past few days and weeks.

3 cliffs bay

On the climbing front things have been heating up. Shipwreck cove is heading into its next stage, with development of the next cove taking place. Over two days myself, Adrian, Roy, Alan and Joe added 17 new routes between f3 and f6c. All on amazing rock, with the golden sand streching for miles, it really has become a crag for all!

I got to go out bouldering with Liam and Alex recently which is always a giggle as they have to be two of the funnest people to climb with.

constant banter and good times are always high on the agenda. But this time we were keen to finally get some clarity on the state of play at Oxwich Bay. Back in 2009 a large section of cliff collapsed but in its wake it left behind plenty of new bouldering which has been pounced apon by the local bouldering population. unfortunately in the melay of FA action it has been hard to clarrify what lines are duplicates, or even which bloc they are on. Well help is on hand we are close to producing the first Topo for this area. This should help turn this spot into a great bouldering destination for all of South wales.

Along the way we have been videoing a few ascents for what ever reason, but this has lead to several technology malfunctions. The first is a personal favourite, VVS.

Verticle Video Syndrome, is very common. With more and more of us are using our phones to capture moments and then uploading them to social media. Ok im cool with this, and im a frequent flyer in this department, but please dont suffer the fate of VVS

Below is a video taken on an IPhone of me climbing the FA of ‘Leeky Sausage’ font 7a. It will highlight my point!

Ok if at first its not obvious check out this great clip explaining the pitfalls of VVS.

Also on the climbing front, Boulders climbing centre recently ran its first summer bouldering competition. The Boulders Bull Run, basically a bouldering comp with a spanish theme due to a new batch of holds from Rocodromo. the day was a great success with over 80 boulder’s taking part in a great atmosphere. I quickly picked up my camera and started shooting. I had forgotten how hard it is to take great shots at indoor climbing centres. The light is terrible, plus there is so much chalk in the air that getting the exposure right and a clear image is not that simple.  Also as it was the first comp i have taken pictures at in quite some time it highlighted the challenge.

with so much going on at once it was hard to know which way to turn the lens. As a result i was not happy with my results and learnt a few valuable lessons for next time.

1. Be careful about what iso setting you use, pics get grainy pretty quickly

2. Pick an interesting problem and stick with it for a bit as appose to trying to capture every moment concentrate on a few key ones.

3. Get the Flash gun out! the lighting is hopeless, especially as we had crazy disco lighting every other second the lighting would change and leave my exposure screwed!

4. Clutter, I hate clutter in shots and on a comp day’s like this, its every where. Score cards on the floor, peoples crap left lying everywhere. Ineed to keep a better eye on the background in this environment, as it can kill a good shot!

Any way have a busy few weeks comming up with a trip to Scotland on the horizon so many more opertunities to get the camera out for some action.