I thought about the trip on Thursday night, the forecast reckoned Saturday was going to be stunning, the first fine weekend for a long time. Sparkle was keen, so on Friday morning I booked tickets. I sent a note to Tom and Cat thinking they’d be busy this weekend but they had nothing planned – unfortunately due to a minor co-ordination glitch neither Cat nor I could get hold of Tom in time to book the supercheap tickets. As a result it was to be me and Sparkle.

Friday night was supposedly a quiet night in – and though we did actually stay in I had to scoot all over London to raid various caches of kit. The net result of all this activity was that Sparkle and I found ourselves going to bed significantly after midnight, this wasn’t the ideal way to prepare for an early start.

On Saturday morning was got up shortly after the target time of 6:30 threw the laid out kit into the daysacks and headed for the train. It was to be a tube day as I had misgivings about the bus (small matters of where and when it went) 7am was not the time to be working out a new route to Kings Cross.

Sparkle at the top of Right Twin Chimney

We managed to grab a cuppa coffee on the platform and were straight onto the train. Midland Mainline 07:25 from St Pancras to Sheffield at 09:56 – it runs like clockwork every time. Sheffield end we had more time to investigate the running and timings of the mysterious Stanage bus. As with my previous experiences of this mythical beast we were completely unable to locate it in the bus station. The very helpful chap at information showed us how to search for all the scheduled services but again this was to no avail. With the spectre of having to bivi in Sheffield bus terminus becoming a very real possibility I made the decisive taxi manoeuvre and lead our intrepid twosome back to the train station taxi rank.  £20 took us to the crag – this I consider expensive but with these day trips, time is more precious.

We warmed up on Right Twin Chimney (v diff) – which was good fun and something called Crack and Cave (v diff). I found this route to be quite stiff for the grade – the bottom crack being awkward direct and then the high traverse to be hair-raising a slopey break for hands with mere ripples for feet. Sparkle demonstrated that I had in fact gone the wrong way, by climbing it direct. Her interpretation of the route being much more accurate than mine.  Sparkle had packed us lunch and we contemplated the next line munching on cheese and ham Sarmies (sarmies = sarnies if you’re from Durban)

Sparkle on Bee