On the 24th & 25th of November the drytooling venue of White Goods and the pub The Griffin Inn, played host to what we hope is the first annual pre-winter drytooling meet.

It was a fine example of what can be done in a short time with the aid of a few emails and facebook, although with the winter not quite sure if it wanted to make an appearance or not it was touch and go there for a while, and I was a little anxious about the thought of nobody turning up. When the time came though I was overwhelmed by the response and we had people driving from all over the country to join in the fun.

The event kicked off with a friendly competition designed to get the best efforts out of all that attended. With the most over complicated handicap system ever devised we could all compete on a level playing field, and with prizes from e-climb , Alpkit and Upraw there was lots up for grabs.

With Flashes and redpoints of "Ready Steady Hook M10", "The Finnish Start M10", and the uber classic "Tumble in the jungle" Hard M9 plus 6 brand new lines to try the climbing gained momentum, air time was taken and expletives expelled

In the end though it was Susan Jensen, Nicole Almond and Dan Lane that were deemed to have put in the best efforts and home the goodies. Nicole did particularly well and managed to flash 2 M7's on her first day drytooling outside of Awesome walls Liverpool.

If the competition wasn't your thing we also had 2 of the latest Axes from E-Climb to test, and in the words of one climber when referring to the Cryo Pro "using these things is like cheating". Praise indeed!

As the light failed we all headed back to the Griffin for a Slap up meal, a superb talk by Malcolm Bass and a pint or nine. As Sunday dawned we sat a little weary and blurry eyed a we quaffed our beacon butties, round 2 with the crag was imminent.

Hangovers and minor injuries aside I think the meet was a huge success and the feedback so far has been nothing but positive.

Huge thank you to Ramon Marin, Malcolm Bass, Jilly & Dave @ the Griffin, Sol Fernadez at Upraw, Kenny at Alpkit and E-Climb.

We would also like to say thank you to Awesome walls and DMM for helping us equip the crag. Thanks Chaps.

• For more info visit - whitegood.blogspot