Sicily has been treating me more than fairly, it's sublime colours are only matched by my friend Kyles convivial nature. There will now follow a blog about fine wines, food, drunken swimming, and a bit of climbing. People requiring 9a sport route beta, or hard Trad crack ascents are redirected elsewhere.
Kyle and I climb have climbed together for years and years, but where his life went left mine went right!
I needed a holiday after battling my hard Trad crack Bernd, so it was rather fortuitous that Kyle was over and needed my services in Sicily. The rigorous diet came abruptly to a halt-thank the Lord.
Kyle had some work which interfered with our climbing, but we managed, there was also trouble with the weather. Etna the active local volcano produces an interesting micro climate that brought rain and high winds.
The local cliffs are interesting, they vary from a beach cliff with scantily clad Fräuleins to volcanic cliffs with rubbish at their foot. I liked the Volcanic one a lot, it made a change from immaculate limestone, immaculate cliffs get boring you know! I put on three kg in a week, and found out rather more than I would have liked about wine. My taste in wine is unfortunately very educated due to 28 years in France and having rich mates. The highlight of my cultural vacance was seeing the Greek ruins from 600 BC or BCE in Syracuse, and visiting the Franchetti wine yards on Etna. The climbing was really good (more of that later) the wine however, were from another planet. My journalist mates can rightly give me a caning for telling them they were spoilt. This week I was spoilt, but hey I deserve it.
