A group of MCC climbers recently visited a  part of Victoria Lines which doesn’t see too many climbers. Its in Wied Anglu, the valley just outside Gharghur, on the upper tier of rock  below the quarry.  Its called “Hangover” area, named after a route put up by John Mackenzie back in 1974.   Although the routes there are good, as is often the case at the crags which don’t see much traffic,  both the base of the crag and the top are quite heavily vegetated.  It doesn’t add much to your climbing day if  you have to struggle through bushes,weeds and brambles  to get to the base of a climb does it!?   Plus, as the top of the routes are also highly vegetated  its hard to find threads to use for lower-offs or anchor points.  Whereas they enjoyed the climbing there as the routes are in fact quite good,  the vegetation was a real pain, to put it mildly!

The same group last Sunday decided to do something about it and returned to the crag armed with an array of sharp cutting and pointed instruments and spent the afternoon trimming the vegetation as well as creating a path at the base of the crag to improve access.  More work still needs to be done but before long we will have another user-friendly good quality crag we can all enjoy at Victoria Lines.  The MCC will also be installing lower-offs to facilitate climbing there even more.

Thanks to Nicky Sammut, Julia Zammit, Maelys Leclerc Keroulle, Stephen Farrugia, Sean Cassar,  Alex and Timmy Alden and Sergej Davidenko.