Suprised!

With all the rain lately its been difficult to get out and climb on rock, this hasn't bothered me to much as most of my training and climbing as either involved time in the gym or pulling on the axes in the project cave, so With the forecast looking good this weekend I decided to head down to Winspit with Dan to clip some bolts, Not having done alot of sport in the last few months I wasn't expecting much.
We arrived at the crag to bright clear blue skies and cold temperatures, the wall was dripping wet in places, In the back of my mind I wanted to try and play on something hard and possibly future RP it, I had my eyes on a hard 7a+/b route called "Solstice", I had a look at it and it looked good, it was wet in places but the sun was out so I knew it would dry later in the day, Dan was keen to jump on "Peppercorn" an awesome technical 7a.
We got some mileage in warming up on some of the classic 6a routes at the crag, we even run up a soaking wet 5+, although easy it gave alot of fun as the water dripped from it.
The routes eventually started to dry so we headed to try the routes we wanted to do. I jumped on first. The route was very steep and blocky, the first section wasn't to bad, My first impressions at the first crux was this is impossible, but after looking further I opened a sequenced that suited me, I was pretty surprised at how strong I felt considering most of my efforts had been on the tools of late. I wasn't aware but this wasn't actually the crux, after moving further up the route you reach another tough section, I spent some time and worked out the moves, Its one of them times where I was at the limit, its the fine line between latching the move or taking some airtime, It feels desperate but I can do it. Feeling tired I lowered to the ground so Dan could jump on his route.
Dan done pretty well on his route before failing at the top in a wet crack, he had a short play before retreating, I then jumped back on pump fest.
I was only on top rope but managed to get all the way up past both cruxes to the top jug without a fall, although feeling beasted and pumped. I continued on up to the top to see what that was like. Feeling tired I decided to clean the line and fight another day, I know I can do this route and now I know all the moves pretty sure its going to go down next weekend.
Dan had another go at is route but feeling tired decided to call it a day, by this time it was getting late so we threw the towel in and called it a day.
Fingers crossed this rain stays away so we get more good days in like today..