Another day climbing, how lucky am I! We were at Markfield Quarry in Leicestershire, partly so that Mary doesn't have so far to drive for a change, but also because we haven't been for a while.

I haven't been much of a fan of the place as it's got loads of gorse growing around the bottoms of routes, in the middle of routes and at the belays, so you get rather prickled. And it's not ideal to set up the belays, with just a few stakes and a couple of huge boulders to make use of.

Today we climbed on Grey Slab to start with, which was new to me and I really enjoyed it. But then we moved over to Betty's Slab, in the photo, which is where we've climbed before and it just isn't as nice in my book, so after a while Julia and I went back to where we started and did a couple more.

There's now a good group of us ladies, with the odd man thrown in, who've been getting out a lot over the last few weeks - we are so fortunate!

It's a fast day and I found that climbing made no difference at all to how I felt, so that's good to know. I took a banana and a boiled egg with me just in case, but wasn't tempted to eat them.

PS in case you're wondering, Fi in red is belaying C on the left, who doesn't like the route and is coming down. Mary is at the top bringing up J in the centre with another bit of the rope dropped down for Julia on the right, who'll retrieve C's gear on her way up. I'd already gone up.