During a visit to Shrewsbury climbing wall, Richard Holt offered me the opportunity to join a small team of WMC climbers on a proposed climbing trip to Sicily. My immediate reaction was ‘uncertainty’ and i said i would think about it, as i had not considered sports climbing in Sicily as something i would be interested in. It took a week or so to decide that perhaps this was a good idea, and i would certainly benefit from a trip abroad. It turned out that only Richard and myself would be going and for my part that suited me as we would not have to do everything by committee. A half empty flight from Stansted delivered us to Palermo late in the evening. Having picked up the car, i drove to the coastal village of Castelluzzo on the San Vito Capo peninsula. We stayed at a small farmhouse run by Paulo and his friend. It was a slightly ‘Fawlty Towers’ experience but given costs etc it was ideal, having a bed room each and also, Paulo cooked our evening meal for us on several occasions. The weather was quite disturbed, each day we set out knowing that we may only have a window to fit in our routes. The main area for climbing was ‘El Bahira’ the southern end of a continuous cliff along the west side of the peninsula. The area had a good mix of graded equipped routes. Wednesday was the exceptional day, we completed a 12 pitch route up an impressive buttress, i enjoyed this very much.
During the week it rained which could be quite violent forcing a quick to retreat. We also scrambled on local ridge and walked up Monte Cofano a peak on an adjacent peninsula.
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