Well, last week was a beautiful few days with warm sunshine, dry rock and blue skies - no not Spain or France, but Llangollen running a SPA Assessment.

As the photo shows, on Thursday the rock was rough, dry and the candidates were leading in good style, in great positions on Railway Buttress near Trefor Rocks. This is a great little crag to climb on if you want to move up the leading grades a bit after you have first learned to lead outdoors. We even had time to get in a couple of sports routes at the end of the day with good bolts and anchors for the candidates to learn some new skills.

Friday saw us at Llanymynech and the team setting up abseils and top/bottom roping systems for group use. The weather also brought out a few teams and Nomad and Spotty Dog were among the routes being climbed.

And then the weather closed in, and this week has had strong winds and rain sweeping across the country - I've been training and assessing staff on the Cannock GoApe ropes course. It's quite interesting standing 40 feet up a tree with it being blown around by 35-40mph winds...!