A day of sunshine in East Lothian meant Ivor and I headed out to North Berwick Law for some sport climbing. Ivor has a project here, which he’s very close to getting clean, and I tried a couple of things I hadn’t done before as well as the usual warm ups.
One of the routes I tried today is the un-named route left of Necktie, which the 7a Max guidebook suggests is 6a. The climbing is quite good, but it’s a bushwhack to get to and the moves to the first bolt felt considerably harder than 6a, unless I was missing something. We ended up improvising a clipstick to clip the first bolt as the prospect of falling onto a gorse and dog rose covered ledge wasn’t too appealing. Nice climbing, but it might be worth coming in from above to allow clipping the first bolt or taking secateurs and a clipstick if you’re going to give this one a try.
