Portland Climb and Camp // Adventure Vlogumentary (Ep 2)

Previously on Combi Life we jumped onto a boat from Jersey to Portland England for a week of adventure with the Jersey Rock Climbing Club where we tackled our first lead sport climbs. This time we're stepping it up and pushing harder. So subscribe, buckle up and let's go exploring. Morning bro. I feel so sore today. There's blood all over my shoes. Everyone's off, So that's it, that's Portland right? Yeah. How big is it? It's like four miles by three or something. We've stuck on an island the whole winter and now we're going on our first trip to another island which is even smaller than our island and it's got some pretty epic features. Day two was a bank holiday in England so we were expecting the climbing crags to be super busy so we headed to the quieter eastern side of the island. Here the crag is very close to the sea which made for spectacular scenic place to climb. However the salt air made some of the holds greasy and for me personally some of the routes seemed harder than I was expecting. Some of the more experienced members of the Jersey Rock Climbing Club seemed to make short work of the challenge though as Tom here appeared to defy gravity sending this 6b plus route called Well he was sending it until the final move that is. Tom has reached the anchor here, he could easily just reach up grab the chains and finish the route and many people would, but not Tom. Because ethically that would be cheating. Tom here always seems to somehow make the most difficult climbs look as easy as if he was just climbing a set of ladders. Obtaining this level of zen in stressful situations is one of the great challenges of rock climbing and it's something I'm actively working on but at the moment I'm still stuck on the first bolt. Even Richie with his advanced age and a belly still half full of whiskey and wine from the night before showed how effective his years of experience are by making short work of this difficult move. Nice one Richie. Aside from the Jersey Rock Climbing Club we were also joined on the crags by someone you guys might recognize. It's Ricardo. Last time I saw you we were wearing masks and pushing the Kombi right? We live in Southampton which is one hour and a half driving from here. We come climbing here very often and it's one of the best spots here in the south coast so when you said that you were coming here Ben you just said okay let's spend a little bit of time with Ben and the others. It's been really good actually to be able to stay with people after a long time you know. The previous two times I've met Ricardo he's been alone. This time in England we also get to meet his lovely wife Sara. A long time ago I fell in love with this person. Love? You never told me that. Are you sure? Yeah I'm pretty sure I told you that. I remember. No no I deny I don't remember any of that. But she's a much younger woman. How did you do this Ricardo? It's hard work yeah. You're an old man. It's hard work for me. It's kind of like easier to work here. It's nicer. It's so nice. I can see the valve. I can see why you like her. She gets her hands dirty. I already knew before meeting her that Sara likes old Volkswagens. That's probably going to come in handy at some point. We got it? What are you doing under there? I want to see the starter. Did you have problems when you were in Italy? Yeah. Yeah it's old. Put a new one. Just got to take a quick minute to thank Surfshark VPN for continuing to support Combi Life, sponsoring this video, and for keeping our data secure whilst we're connected to the internet. If you don't know what a VPN is, it stands for virtual private network and it's basically an encrypted tunnel between your computer and the internet. We use it all the time whilst we're traveling or whenever we're connected to a public wi-fi like we have been at the campsite during this video. It gives us great peace of mind when we're banking and connecting to the internet, sharing passwords and things like that over unsecured networks. But it's more than just security. There's a whole heap of benefits of having a VPN, from getting discounts on flights and hotel bookings, to being able to access media in other content libraries like Netflix from other countries. I also use it to keep my searches private on the internet so I can get real organic unbiased search results if I'm trying to research something. It's really useful for a lot of different use cases. If you haven't already got a VPN, I can highly recommend Surfshark VPN. I've been using them for forever and I will continue to do so. It's very inexpensive and super easy to use and the best part is one subscription covers you for all of your devices. Today we're able to offer you a 83% discount plus three months free. I will link it below in the top line of the description. Thanks again to Surfshark for supporting Combi Life. Now let's go exploring! I've been coming for about three years. Every summer we come every weekend or whenever we can. Since we have the van we sleep here a bit more often. Not that I'm improving at all at climbing but I still enjoy the sun and the beach. I really like that you climb by the sea so the view is fantastic. You don't get that many places. That looks stunning! As our week on the island progressed we explored more of Portland's sea cliffs and the sheer scale and immense variety of the climbing routes here was revealed. These limestone cliffs are something to behold. As a complete noob to climbing, the size and severity of some of the single pitch routes in Portland had my pulse racing. But as Eleanor confidently demonstrated on this sheer vertical wall under the pumping Portland sunshine, that's kind of the point. I love having the quickdraws in my harness. I love the feeling of clicking that sport draw into the bolt and pulling the rope up and that added like pressure of being stuck on that crimpy hold and having to get that move. Oh man just talking about it I literally want to just go climb some sport routes. Just being able to push myself as hard as possible but feel safe at the same time. This like grading system I really enjoy. Being able to see where you're at and knowing that you're able to try and work on that grade and see see where you are. What was the route in the right grade? It's called Boys Will Be Boys and it's a 6b plus obviously top 50. Yeah decided to try it and um good whole way amazing. It kind of like these short routes here kind of burn you out very quickly have a very hard one move to get over whether that just slowly drain the energy away and right at the top when you've got no energy left is when you basically need to uh monkey bar and hand traverse a little bit which is a bit sketchy but uh yeah it's great mate loved it. Obviously the route kind of the best routes are the ones you just get away with and that was definitely one of them. It might be a while before I'm able to hang confidently from my fingertips 88 feet off the ground like Tom and right now the prospect of me sending these mammoth sea cliffs still seemed remote. Fortunately Portland has grades accessible to all abilities so anyone can come here and have a good time and learn to lead climb. So the first route that I led was a really nice piece of rock like a slab so it was quite easy to climb up. I really enjoyed it because I think at that point I'd already done some harder climbs so I felt really comfortable leading that because it was I'd just built up the technique with my footwork the views were beautiful as well it's just near the sea so clear blue water really nice views yeah really nice and also what I enjoyed about it was it was really quiet there's no one else down there so had no pressure on me no one waiting to get on a climb or anything so that really helped as well. I think there were a few times when I was lead climbing and I'd got to a point above the bolt I was a little bit nervous about falling because I had fallen a few times before and hurt myself but not during lead climbing so I was a bit unsure what would happen and how far I would fall whether I'd hurt myself but actually it was fine I just trusted my feet sometimes I felt a bit more nervous when I was getting to a bolt and then trying to pull the rope clipping and checking it wasn't back clipped so that whole time when you're so close and trying to get the gear in and checking you're doing it right but you're not really holding on to anything and you're relying on your footwork and your balance that's probably when I was a little bit more worried because I thought if I can't clip this bolt in then I'm going all the way back to the last bolt and even further so it can be intimidating and a bit daunting but I yeah I had some really experienced people around me who were encouraging and I think that kind of gave me the courage to just give it a go and if I fall I fall yeah I just had this like buzz I was on a high that's your first successful lead you're so confident on it so happy just had this like overwhelming sense of achievement and I was just ready to do the next climb just wanted to do another one and another one it became a bit addictive so it was all uh good on the footwork and uh good hands as well so yeah smashed it absolutely smashed it one of the best in the region I hear yeah yeah yeah and we've got this one next as well we might have a go on and another one so so yeah it's just amazing feeling and to see everyone else as well uh praising you and just giving that positive feedback and seeing the development I think throughout the week going from proper baby beginner knowing nothing to just getting a lead climbing just felt really like I was progressing and yeah so I felt quite proud of still to come on combi life we discover what's hidden inside the limestone that's insane isn't it and just why they call it the jurassic coast everywhere dan psychs himself up to attempt the hardest climb yet I need more grip I need more grip oh no I'm going connor attempts to send a huge arrette and one of the most impressive climbs on the southern coast this is 28 meter climb this is big just like actual fear like I never really fully felt this before and did you hear that your husband dropped me it was just five meters yeah and you're two meters tall I landed on my back man thanks so much to our patrons who made this video possible please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe so we can catch you next time until then happy travels