Hello,
the Guernsey Mountaineering Club are organising their second Annual Climbing Festival on the August bank holiday weekend this year - Thursday 27th - Monday 31st. It'll be fairly low key - we use a farmers field about 10 minutes walk from the main crags and provide a campfire, & mess tent or two to shelter in if the weather's naff. There's a small hotel down the road which does good value bar meals, restaurant food, B&B and has two bars. We can offer you free camping (and maybe tentage), cheap food, climbing partners/guides, boulder mats, ab ropes, rack usage, transport to and from the crag (and harbour/airport) and other helpful stuff I can't think of right now. Basically, we want people to come over and enjoy a day's climbing on good rock & have a swim in the sea before sharing experiences and stories round the fire or in the pub afterwards. Repeat. Go home sunburnt and happy
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Climbing-wise, everything is sea cliff trad on gneiss & granite. Mostly single pitch up to 90feet, but there are longer pitches and multi-pitches too. Plenty of bouldering & some DWS. Friction is usually excellent/aggressive, polish is non-existent. Rock quality varies as you'd expect on seacliffs. Grades go up to E7 & V9 with a couple of harder projects. There's about 1400 or so routes to go at. Walk-ins are normally in the region of 10 minutes max from the nearest carpark. Martin Crocker liked it so much he kept coming back for holidays and put up a hundred routes.
Anybody interested? It's also the Vale Earth Fair music festival that weekend amongst other events - this is one of the top 'boutique' music festivals in the UK. It takes ~20/30 minutes to get from one end of the island to the other.
Getting to the island - fly from Gatwick/Stansted/London City/Southampton/Bristol/Manchester/East Midlands/Birmingham, ferry from Poole or Portsmouth. Once on island hire cars are ~£30 a day if you really want one, but there will be no problem with local climbers running you to and from the crag.
General tourist info
http://www.visitguernsey.com/
Our club site
http://www.gmc.org.gg/
The hotel down the road
http://www.imperialinguernsey.com/
UKC stuff
http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/?q=GUERNSEY&x=-2.579&y=49.461...
The ferry company
http://www.condorferries.co.uk/
The airlines which fly here
http://www.aurigny.com/
http://www.flybe.com/
Vale Earth Fair
http://www.valeearthfair.org/
Other Island events that weekend
http://www.visitguernsey.com/explore-our-events?keywords=&start_date=27...
There is a good crag index with topos on the club website www.gmc.org.gg and plenty of climbing at pretty much all grades. A new guidebook is in progress
http://www.gmc.org.gg/climbing-in-guernsey/2015-guide-book/ Some of the access is challenging at some crags, but nothing that will be a problem as you'll have locals to 'guide' you.
Questions? Fire away, we can advise you on all aspects of coming to the island and climbing here - want to bring non-climbing family? - we can tell them what to go and see.
