This crag suffered pretty badly in the earthquakes, but there are still great buttresses to play on.
It was the morning after the night before, and with great big hangovers me and Grace headed up to Britten Crag to meet up with some friends. It must have been early afternoon by the time we set off, but this wasn’t a problem we were happy to have a slow day. Having never been before we found getting to the crag a little confusing.
Britten is pretty much a continuation of Cattlestop Crag so it can be reached from the same parking area up on the summit road. But it is marginally easier to access the crag from the other side, parking on Parkridge Place which is a couple of roads off Mount Pleasant road. The end of the crag is visible over the fence to the south. Several vague paths/animal tracks head along the bottom of the first edge, make sure you follow one that drops down to the next edge where the better climbing is located.
After following many wrong tracks we found the others playing on some rather hard overhanging routes. They obviously had a lot more psyche than us. But to the left were a number of lovely easier, less steep bolted lines in brilliant sunshine. So having not climbed for several months I obviously started there. To my surprise the usually rubbish rock felt good, solid and above all pleasant to climb. After a couple of routes our hangovers had subsided, and everyone seemed happy to just sit in the sun, chat before slowly making our way en-mass back to the cars.
