St Aldhelm's Head Bouldering/Exploring

On Saturday, I took a chance to explore St Aldhelm's Head a little more and see what oppotunities might be available for new routeing.

St Aldhelm's Head beach from the clifftop

The forecast was pretty dire, with heavy showers expected most of the day. However, after a short lie in I was up and about by 10.30 and the sun was shining. Only one short sharp shower came my way around 3.30pm - as I was heading to the pub.

St Aldhelm's Head is an interesting area, and one often overlooked my many visitors. It does posess a somewhat esoteric reputation (probably why I like it) and the rock quality is lesser than that of the fine sea cliffs further down the coast, being high up above the beach they get less erosion from the sea. The beach below the cliffs is an array of boulders and shrubbery, giving an isolated feel but beautiful surroundings for bouldering.

Upper cliffs

Recent years have seen a surge in bouldering development on the beach by locals, and many impressive lines have been put up. Still, further development potential was available on the East Beach near Buttery Corner and this was my main objective for the day.

East Beach - Deer Stalker V2

I came here shortly after the Doreset Bouldering guide by Ben Stokes came out last year, so had already experienced a few of the problems already. Today it was just me, and the occasional Deer hopping amongst the boulders.

I found a blue nylon rope to help my decent on to the East Beach and made my way towards Buttery Corner, keeping an eye out for any good boulders that have fallen from above. I kept going to explore the sea cliffs beyond Buttery Corner and found the two recorded routes that exist there. I could see there might be potential for further lines to go, but as with this area of cliff the top outs can be very loose and dangerous, so caution will be needed.

East Beach - Butter Knife  V1

Making my way back along the East Beach I got to work on a couple of boulders, putting up a few (possibly new) problems up to V3.

I did come back the next day for some more exploring, unfortunately the previous nights beer session put rest to that. :)