Claire and I had another great trip to Pembroke on the Spring bank holiday weekend. We sneaked over to St. Govan’s early on saturday morning before the crowds arrived where I managed my first E3 onsight - the classic Butcher. It’s known to be a soft touch for the grade, but I was pretty happy with myself for an 8am climb. I managed another E3 later in the trip, the aptly named Amazon, at the Amazon Wall near Lydstep.

During another early morning raid at Trevallen on Monday, I unwittingly scared myself silly, attempting a much more serious E3 called Sunlover (the second photo is of Claire having a well earned lie down, at a ledge two-thirds of the way up). It’s a classic Pembroke testpiece, but I would strongly recommend against climbing it unless you are very confident at the grade (which I’m most definitely not, at this point in time). I managed to complete it with one rest on a dodgy cam, but only by the skin of my teeth.

The UK grading system is a bit crazy - each of the climbs I’ve mentioned had the same grade - E3 5c - but, where the first two felt to me like pumpy and well protected jug-fests, the latter felt like a thin and technical death route, and super-pumpy to boot! Either the first two should be top-end E2, or Sunlover should be E4.

After a scary morning, I calmed my nerves in the afternoon by ambling up Manzoku, a classic E1 at Stennis head. Then, on monday evening, we finished the trip with Claire leading Riders on the Storm, an amazing HVS which involved a 20 metre horizontal traverse just a few metres above the sea.

I can’t wait for the next trip to Pembroke, but I think I’ll be choosing my next E3 a bit more wisely.