Blokfest - TCA Bristol

On Saturday morning we drove across the Severn Bridge again, but this time to go to Blokfest at TCA bouldering centre in Bristol. When we arrived in Bristol, I had some hash browns for breakfast  before driving on to the centre.

We arrived early and we went around to look at all of the blocs and decided which ones to climb first. By the time we had finished looking at the problems we had half an hour to warm up so my brother Oscar and I started to warm up.

The briefing started at five to 10 and it wasn't long before we were able to start the problems. I started on easy ones but underestimated one of the climbs and fell off it. It was on a flat wall and there was a square volume in the middle - the only good hold on the climb. After failing this I was annoyed because it looked easier than it was. I failed it because I wasn't facing the right way on the volume as I found out later.

I was sad after this so I took a break and then went back to try some more of the easy climbs then attempted some more of the difficult ones. Some of these really annoyed me but I managed to do a few. The cave was one of the ones that annoyed me because I couldn't stick the third move for long enough which meant I couldn't get my heel on to do the next move.

I had lunch with my brother (we had mini eggs) and then went back in to try some of the problems that I had failed earlier. I was really happy because I managed to top the problem with the square volume which I failed before. The other one I topped was one which started with two really bad holds that I could only just pull off. The next two moves were easy but then the last move was reachy (for me).

I thought that Saturday was the worst Blokfest I have done because I seemed to be irritable for most of the morning.

One of the things that annoyed me was that one of the volumes wasn't taped up and I didn't know whether I could use it or not because in the briefing they said that the only volume that was in was on another climb and that all the rest would be taped up. I saw some people using it and some people not so I didn't know what to do when I was on the climb - but I didn't use it just in case.

This Blokfest seemed to harder than the others but I don't know if this was because the problems were harder or because I was tired and irritable.