The Element of Surprise

Perhaps we're a little weird, a little unconventional. But to us, it's just as likely to be the accidental meetings, happenings, eddies in the current, that make our days. Yes, we climb, we go sea kayaking, biking or fell running. We are lucky enough to get to some fantastic places, in a way that makes us happy. But it's often the things that happen by chance that leave us smirking.
Last weekend, we found ourselves camping in a field of alpacas. They had a canny ability to display "formation curiosity". All in a line, each with a palpably questioning look on their hairy little faces.We had gone to the Peak District to sneak some climbing in under autumn's door. As it turned out, a layer of frost on the ground early on Saturday alerted us that we may have cut it a bit fine...In the end, a walk over the gritstone edges was the best option. There was an extraordinary quality to the light in the Peak. It was as faint and golden as I'd experienced. Sunday saw us heaving desperately on Curbar's unforgiving cliffs. Definitely a hard man's crag, that, and perhaps not the most appropriate for our needs, soft and crusty as we were. It's been an atrocious year for climbing, and it's sad to think that our climbing year might already be over. Dreams of hot rock (and dare I say it, bolts) are haunting us, though, and we may yet make that Easyjet booking.
And so, it may not have been the climbing that captured our attention this weekend, but the things we saw along the way.