Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Big Changes, New Routes, discounts, New Managers..........

Puig on Fire

Saturday 24th January will stick in the minds of quite a few people on the Costa Blanca. Over 20, 000 homes had to be evacuated when strong winds caused an electric pilon to fall over. The winds continued to be strong meaning the fire fighting helicopters couldn’t fly. The Orange House was without power for over 24 hours, but we didnt think we had to worry about the fire reaching us when they brought 1,000s of gas bottles down to the football field and horses came to stay on the bottom terrace. You can take a look at some of the videos on YouTube which shows the fire creeping around Puig, click the photo...

New Managers at The Orange House

January 2009 and new Managers arrive on the Costa, Gaz Parry and his partner Kate Mills (front page of Climb Mag this month) arrived with Joe. Visitors to the house in the past will remember the dogs and cats which now all live in Devon, however Joe is slightly bigger and more smelly. I am sure he would welcome the odd apple or carrot ( have you guessed what he is yet) Kate is well and truely in charge and things are running very well with new energy injected into the old house! Gaz is enjoying the sunshine and ticking lots of hard routes, I did wonder why Rich was so happy to have them both over to ryn the house.

Ticking Big Trad Numbers.....

Super G a trad E7/8 6c or 8a fell to Richard yesterday on his second attempt, Gaz on/sighted it, "we both feel E6 6b or 7b is appropriate" said Rich. Asteroid Storm E7 6b Gaz on/sighted and gave it the grade E4 6a. Several others have also had what maybe their second and third ascents. Gaz has the corrections book for Rockfax, so realistic grades will be posted shortly.If anyone is going over and wants to give any hard trad routes a go then get in touch with the boys and check the new grades first.

Gaz Parry on Asteroid Storm was E7 now E4 6a

New Easy road side Sport area

Rich has been busy bolting a new crag in between Echos 1 and 2, called Echo 1.5 funnily enough. The crag has two sector Alto (upper) and Abajo (lower) with 18 mostly very easy sports routes, this is already popular with the local Spanish climbers. The routes have modern equipment with double bolt chain lower offs. For topos email us, here a taster.


A large college group found out that Rich was naming routes at the crag and paid into the "bolt Fund" to choose a name, one guy named a route after his girlfriend, how sweet.

Discounts and roll back on prices & cheap flights....

Due to the credit crunch and the exchange rate we have dropped our prices to help those guests coming over from the UK. You can check out all the new discount bands on the website and get in touch to book. A website to check out for flights is Skyscanner, it allows you to put in your destination and it will show you all the airports can you can fly from and the cheapest flights.