Today was another opportunity to give Adam a hand with his preparations for his SPA (Single Pitch Award – rock climbing) assessment. With only a few days to the big weekend, Adam was keen to practise set ups and it’s always useful to try this at new venues. Although I hadn’t used the crag before, I had heard of a venue at Cranberry Rock on the Stiperstones in the Shropshire Hills, so we headed south to investigate.

Cranberry Rock is not a particularly large crag, either in terms of height or number of routes, but the access is straight forward and it provides awesome panoramic views (in good weather!). We spent a good while simply clambering over the rock identifying potential routes that could be set up before actually getting the ropes out. It was certainly nice to be able to spent time exploring a crag properly.

We set up a number of climbs as we moved along the crag. There were certainly lots of placements for gear, but it was easy to get drawn into using placements too near to the top of the climb, before we started to force ourselves to look further back where there were still plenty of options.

We had a couple of climbs each, exploring different variations of the same overall routes, and were quite pleased to see how easy it is for a climber to set themselves challenges of varying degrees of difficulty on the same route – ideal for group work.

Unfortunately, the rain decided to spoil what had begun as a perfect morning and, given that we had achieved what we had set out to do, we beat a hasty retreat to the car. Also, I hadn’t got round to taking any photos before the downpour, so here’s a photo from our last trip out.

Adam seems well prepared for his assessment this weekend and should have no major problems. However, assessments can do funny things to people so good luck Adam!