New Routing in Portugal…
A Place of dreams, white sand, palm trees and amazing recently-developed rock climbs. A haven for rock climbers to escape to and experience new climbs on solid rock and also to chill out in a beautiful location. Elizabeth (my wife) and I went down to have a break, teach some climbing and swim with dolphins.
Typical airports! We sat at Bristol Airport for two hours waiting for our flight, ended up late boarding, but eventually were airborne. Budget airlines are great, but as the name suggests they are completely “budget”. Coffee, tea, pack of crisps and a pack of two biscuits, price £15! Budget airline — more like over budget airline, I say!
Anyway, it wasn’t all that bad: cheap, cheerful but comfortable. The thing I love most about flying is being able to look out and see the land five miles below us! You can’t beat that, the feeling of floating over the earth.
We arrived, met our lift and drove for thirty five minutes to Albufeira, just down the Algarve from Faro. Our hotel was a white-washed building, typical of Southern Europe, with a small but deep pool, which we chilled out in during the hot sticky afternoons. There was also a lovely bar on the side. 500 metres away was the beach, beautiful golden sands from which cliffs rise. It it made of the loosest sand stone that I have ever seen but there were many signs advising of danger due to loose rock.
We ended today in a delightful bar, just up from the beach, drinking San Miguels and enjoying a local chicken Piri Piri. These were great evenings.
We booked a taxi for our first day to take us out to Benafim, near the cliffs. The taxi arrived on-time but with the wrong directions and destination. After correcting this we set off. It was a good journey in a comfortable air-conditioned minibus, only problem was that the driver didn’t know where to go! I had a map with me so offered some assistance and eventually we made it.
We saw the crag from quite a distance away, rising out of the arid wilderness of inland Portugal. Considering we were only 30 km from Albufeira, it took seventy minutes by road, the last 3km I guessed at and we were dropped off in a small ‘town’ called ‘Penina’.
From here we walked 1.5km along a dirt track to reach the village of ‘Rocha da Pena.’ In the centre of the village was a welcome respite from the heat, in the ‘Bar de Grutas’. The barman, Horácio, was great fun, helping us with topographic maps of the crags which rose, similarly to Stannage but higher, out of the arid ground straight up for about 30 metres. The cliffs were very broken and jumbled giving way to much vegetation and many crumbling areas.
There are ten good buttresses, easily identifiable as you walk up from the bar — one is even named after the bar!
Horácio was great, he is an avid climber and when the bar is quite, he goes up to climb — comfortably being able to master all the routes there and pioneering new ones. He spoke very little English and we spoke no Portuguese so conversation was hard, however climbing is an international language and we quickly made friends and had conversation using signs, drawings and broken English. We discovered that he had put up many routes in the area and led French grade 7a!
We left the bar and started walking into the crag. We could see the crag growing in size as we approached it. After twenty minutes of walking we were under our buttress, a very slabby looking bit of rock of white and red limestone.
We scrambled up to the base of the crag, called ‘Vaca’, and sorted out our gear. I kitted up and took a rack of climbing nuts and a full rack of friends (equipment to be placed into cracks in the cliff to help protect the climber in the event of a fall).
In retrospect I am very glad I took the friends. During the climb I placed six items of protection including five friends all from sizes one to three! The crag we were on consisted mainly of parallel vertical and horizontal cracks. I also placed one nut.
On our crag were three grade 5a, and one grade 6b routes. After climbing on these we attempted a new route straight up the bottom wall left of an existing route, named after the crag, ‘Vaca 4’ which led left over the bulge and then right to follow the top crack line direct to the left of the lower off-point.
The climbing was awesome on solid limestone with a couple of dodgy pieces but overall it was solid.
I led up the bottom buttress to a diagonal crack into which I managed to fit a size two friend. I then led left onto a blunt arête and followed this to a tree, where I could have had a hanging belay, but chose not to. I carried on up and then left into a crack on the right of ‘Vaca’ route. I moved up the final crack, lacing it as I went until I reached the hanger of ‘Vaca’ which I used to descend from.
I looked up to see if I could top out (go over the top of the cliff) but the rock above was loose and could easily have slipped back down. Elizabeth lowered me off and after safely reaching the bottom, we rigged for Elizabeth to climb. Elizabeth climbed my new route simply, making it look almost easy! After reaching the top she hung there taking some photographs.
The route isn’t mind blowing but it was good and I would grade it a British VS 4b — maybe UIAA five. Somebody needs to repeat it and let me know. I have called it ‘Isabet’, after Elizabeth. We popped back down to see Horácio and record our route in his log book which he kept behind the bar, and he said “Great, I’ll pop up there tonight whilst walking the dog.” He wasn’t quite as excited as I was alas.
I would dispute the local guide book which mentions that the crag is a maximum of 25 metres high. On a 50 metres rope I wasn’t able to stay on the ground, I had to climb about 3 metres off the ground to enable Elizabeth to be safe on a ledge 2 metres off the ground in order to belay me! A 55 metre or ideally a 60 metre rope would be perfect.
I strongly recommend a visit to the area. It was a great place to go to for a week or even a weekend.
However be aware of the extreme heat of the summer! November to December and February to March are the recommended months for minimum visitors and good weather — also cheap flights!