Early Persepectives - Emperor's new clothes?

Ok so for now photo's/vid's that sort of thing are off for the moment i'm afraid. Ive found some internet on our farm but its some old relic of a PC that grunts and groans if you ask it to load the BBC webpage. The monitor is even worse, the picture is really, really blurry so as i'm typing this i'm having to sort of squint through one eye to get any sense of what i'm writing.

So Rocklands, so far...hmmm. I'm going to start off with something controversial and say i'm not bowled over with the place. It's early days, so my opinion may change, but right now i feel when climbers who visit here get asked what they think about it - its maybe a case of the emperor's new clothes going on. What i mean by this is that in that story the emperor was tricked in to appearing in the nude because everyone had told him his non existant robes were great and he was frightened to question popular opinion. Perhaps here everyone wants to join the herd and say Rocklands is the world's top bouldering mecca just to agree with the pack, maybe i'm wrong..the jury's out i guess.

For me right now, Clanwilliam as a local centre for shopping etc is functional, but the place is pretty soul less. Access to the crag is pretty hard, as the road is often dirt tracks or worse, fine in a pick-up, but remember we came here in a 1977 VW Beetle! Twice yesterday we had to dig it out of the sand, its like the Dakar Rally at times. More specifically there is loads of rock, its golden orange and there is some beautiful features, but its also pretty sharp in places, similar to grit, so pulling hard in the African sun can be painful.

Finally there is no guide as such, so we have these topos printed from the net. They are ok, but not that clear, some are out of date and many of the directions are wrong. It means only around 5-6 of the 18 supposed areas are easy for us to go to without help. It seems most climbers meet in large packs in the hope that someone knows where the rocks are from the car park and its easier, but that means you spend your day with 30 other guys trying the area classic. Ok for beta but if you came here to experience some real wilderness, not really what you'd planned.

Its certainly early days, and i don't want to sound totally down on the place. We have been up to the Sassie's, i've tried Pinotage - a 7c+ classic overhang here - and have a way i think i can do it with some skin. I also did Petit Hueco in a few goes, an amazing 7b+ roof that was high quality. Also, saw Kevin Jorgensen flash some 8a highball arete in fine style that was impressive.

So that's all good, but quality moderates for the missus seem pretty elusive so far and combine that with my earlier points made in this post...then can we really compare this with a Fontainbleau as yet? Maybe for the top level American climbers that we're staying with here, that crush 8a's for warm up's but for your more average Joe, i'm not so sure to be honest.

Today we went to the Riverside boulders. Usual problems finding them of course, but eventually we spied chalk on holds and zoned in. To be fair it was a good day, i climbed a really nice 7b overhang called Dragonfly and then crimped my way up a cool 7c roof called Roof Fighter with a funky toe-hook move. The area was not world class though by any means and we looked at the hard stuff too, like Fred's 8b Olifants Dawn which just looked nasty sharp.

Anyway, things appear to be on the up i guess...weather is forecast to be very settled now and i have that Pinotage thing to go back to at some point. If you've read all this give yourself a pat on that back...