Ten of us and Weaver the dog braved the rather wintry conditions in the Sanctuary area of Harpur Hill quarries today. We found most routes quite hard for the grade – or perhaps sports climbing in Mediterranean sunshine has made us all soft! The bolts were quite widely spaced so there was some deft use of clipsticks. Biggest challenge of the day was retrieving a quickdraw left halfway up a route after a failed attempt. It was eventually reached by an impressive pendulum when lowering off an adjacent route. Typically the sunshine arrived just as most of us had run out of strength and were about to leave.