I’ve driven past the broken cliffs above Llanfairfechan thousands of times. It’s felt so long, we decided we really should have headed up and had a look by now.

The weather was warm and ideal for our first visit. After following some intricate directions through the woods and up past the old quarry inclines we soon found the crag in question and to our delight, it looked quite good. Super grippy rock.

The A55 is far below, but still pretty noisy, but the views out to sea are superb.

We climbed a couple of routes on the first ‘By the Fench’ crag, then walked a little further over to find and then climb the corner on the left of the ‘Black Slab’.

The corner was a good climb – no where near as steep as the photo above makes it look! But I found the climbing a bit awkward for the first laybacking section. There are plenty of bolts though, which made it psychologically easier! There is a second pitch to the route, but we both climbed to the first belay at 28m, then abseiled down as there’s a bit of rope drag, and edges to contend with if you want to do the additional 10m second pitch. After this, we made our way back down to the van, so that we could drive further east to an Outdoor Education Party!

Here we celebrated the retirement of the longest (ever?) standing member of my Outdoor Education Team! Chris, who is also a fellow LJMU Outdoor Education graduate, is standing down as Head of Caving after a staggering 38 year innings! We had a wonderful evening of games, pizza, drinks, speeches, certificates, gifts.

Instead of giving a speech myself, I wrote and performed (conducted?) a song for him, that involved a sing-along chorus!

Climbs at Creigiau Gigfran:

• Blue Streak, 5c**
• Don’t Fence me in, 5c*
• Mike Bailey’s Route, 6b**