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I wish we could rave about Siruana as much as everyone has to us but due to a combination of factors things didn’t quite gel for us. The campsite seemed to be in a state of self destruct, it was dam cold, and the climbing was just on the difficult side for Jools.

We bumped into a famous rock climber, Chris Sharma, no to tell the truth, we stalked Chris Sharma and harassed him to the point of mugging to get a photo (This was only so as to be able to send it to Matt who we met at La Rancune, not to add to our Sharma shrine and log book). The whole ordeal leaving us feeling rather pathetic and sorry for the poor chap who seemed a little busy at the time and not at all interested as to why we wanted a photo of the back of him. I so hope Lelly (my brother) doesn’t have to put up with goons like us in his celeb-like life style.

As we settled in for the evening, two Spaniards knocked on the door. They had been out climbing for the day and found a stray dog, which

was very thin and had dry scaling skin. Having found out from people we climbed with in the day that I was a vet, they came to seek some advice. Although it was dark and difficult to examine the dog I did think that there was a possibility of leishmaniasis, a common condition of southern Spain. I have only ever seen one case in the UK. I offered a tentative diagnosis and explained that they should take the dog to see a more experienced local vet. It was so strange to have been suddenly catapulted back into the veterinary role in such an unlikely setting, but it did feel good. One thing I felt affected us both was that being in a campsite did not have the same sense of freedom as the wild camping, it was only when we left and parked up the next night in an all too familiar dogging venue did we really relax again (this site also had a plethora of gay porn to accompany the patrons).

Montserrat was happy that we were there, that’s how it felt. Climbers and travellers often seem to be in discord with landowners and authorities due to perceived conflict of interests, but not at Montserrat.

We were able to stay in the Monastery car park overnight and the information office had copies of the climbing guidebooks for perusal. We spent the day of arrival doing the tourist thing. The church is dedicated to the ashen-faced Madonna, it is said that her face is smoke-stained, if so it needs a good clean because it’s definitely black! It is defiantly worth the time to visit including the evening chorus, at 6.45pm each evening the monks and choir sing the arias. We didn’t go to the museum because we were just too bone idle. The next day we climbed the Gorro Frigi.

One evening just as we were settling in, there was a knock on the door. It was our very drunk French neighbour Cyril and Marie-Claire inviting me for a drink. Jools was under the weather so I spent the wee hours drinking Almanac and beer whilst trying to improve my French. The only new phrases I learnt were, ‘I feel good’ and ‘I smell bad’. Cyril and Marie-Claire headed south on their overland trip to Africa the next day whilst we headed north on ours.