Colmcille Climbers - Dunmore Head. Hard men lead hard routes.

Michael McGinty Well, a grand wee soiree was had by myself and Pete Smith Esq. (oh he of quick wit and red ski-pants) at Culdaff on Tuesday evening. Things got off to a flyin' start with Pete scooting up Master of Puppets (HVS 5b) like he was walking to the shop for milk, never even breaking sweat as his red butt disappeared over the crux shouting "Wot ho, old chap!" or something like that.

Next on the agenda was my assault on Fluid Inclusions (HVS 5a). I'd never done this testy delicate footsey, pinchy, smeary, knee wobbly, grumpy little b*****d before, (at one point I'd considered calling it 'Fluid Extrusions' for obvious reasons), but had a great time on it.

Pete's next contribution was to make short work of Shining Cossacks (HVS 5a) which took him all of about 25 seconds to do [Editor's note - I do kinda know the route!].

We were going well so we decided to surround Calamity Collins (VS 5a) and give it a bit of a hiding. I took the pointy end on this one, and being quite dumbfounded by the beginning having placed a lovely big No. 9 walnut, Pete then hinted that I had to get my right foot in the same place to do the next move.
"Well now", I thought, "I'm neither double jointed (you'd need to be pheckin' treble jointed, I reckon), nor do I have a foot that's a metre long" (if you know what I mean). But I trusted the man and hauled myself up. At this point I wanted to get back down and beat him to within an inch of his miserable life:
A: for nearly giving me a hernia;
B: for me nearly pulling my right arm off (that doesn't sound quite right, does it?); and
C: because, well, just because!
Pete shot up the route like a man possessed. I think he is training for speed climbing or something. [Editor's note - he's lying but it makes me look good so I left it in]

As the evening was drawing in we decided to squeeze in one more and Grecian Gift (VS 4c) was the lucky winner. I trundled up this one and taking a wee bit too long on the crux near the top left poor old Petie to climb up in the pitch-darkness. "It's hard enough when you can see the blasted holds," he would say. "It'll do you good," I would shout back. "Sod off, Batman!" he would reply, (this because there were bats flying 'round my ears at the top)! So after our good-natured banter [Ed - who said it was good-natured?] we did what most self-respecting climbers do after an evening's fun and frolics at Dunmore Head, and retired to McGrory's for, I think, a well deserved pint.