Rock climbing

5 reasons to join an outdoor adventure club

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DSC05957

Photo credit: Matt Cripsey 

For the past two years I’ve been a member of the Croydon Mountaineering Club (yeah, yeah, I know there are no mountains in Croydon). What a great two years of adventures it’s been – climbing Scafell Pike, watching the sun set from the summit of Mt Snowdon, climbing sea cliffs, and even organising the after-dinner entertainment at the annual dinner.

It was certainly a bit scary turning up at the pub for the first time, having to talk to random people who used outdoor lingo like munros, cams, hexes, and benighted. It was perhaps even scarier going on the first outdoor meet where I worried about my fitness levels, my lack of climbing ability and having to sleep in a room with 10 snoring strangers. But the doubts subsided when everyone was enjoying the breath-taking views and then later, in front of a roaring fire, when we were having a drunken laugh and scoffing cheese and crackers.

So, if you have a yearning to get outside more or have toyed with the idea of joining a club but haven’t made the plunge yet, here are my five reasons why you should bite the bullet and join up. Continue reading →

These are the goals (not resolutions) I’m setting myself for 2017

/ katrinamegget / 4 Comments

So, the first day of the new year has come and gone. I can’t help but wonder how many people made New Year’s Resolutions and have already broken them?

By all accounts, according to the experts, the better term to use is goals, not resolutions, which can be defined as more specific, and which are therefore easier to keep than a waffly ‘lose weight’ resolution. They also say that focusing on small and easy changes, and avoiding absolutes like ‘giving up smoking cold turkey tomorrow’ will help ensure the resolutions stick. And supposedly the other trick to keeping a New Year’s Resolution is to not have too many or too many complex ones that require multiple behaviour changes.

Hmmm, I may have failed here as my hand-written list came to nearly the length of an A4 page!

And here they are… Continue reading →

Rock climbing over the ocean

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Me at the Cattle Troughs, Swanage
I was positively sure I was going to die. Tears streamed down my face, my body shook uncontrollably. “I can’t do this,” I heard myself repeat over and over as my self-doubt loomed. But, against the self-preserving urge, I took a deep, shuddering breath, grasped the rope, pushed my bum out to oblivion and attempted the two-metre abseil to the first ledge – some 10 or so metres above a wild, white-crested sea.

Continue reading →

Rock climbing at Harrison’s Rocks

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Harrison’s Rocks
I’m strapped into a harness clinging onto the side of a rock face like a barnacle stuck to the hull of a boat. One piece of rope, my trusty belayer and my adrenaline-fuelled muscles are all that are keeping me from falling to certain death. (Ok maybe just a broken leg or two – I’m only a couple of metres off the ground after all, but I might as well be hanging off the top of the Eiffel Tower).
With quivering muscles, my body contorted in ways a Russian gymnast would be proud of and my feet precariously close to slipping, I attempt to reach for a higher hand grip, avoiding the sight beneath me.

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Cultivating a growth mindset

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Being new to rock climbing is never going to be easy. But to fail what should have been a relatively easy grade 4 climb – that I’d already climbed, I might add – is beyond annoying.
In response, I did what a lot of people would do – I sulked, stomped about, pulled faces, made excuses. And of course, when I tried again I still struggled to get off the ground (literally). What does this say?

Continue reading →