Welcome to the cruise

I headed to Ratho today after lectures. I've been getting abit bored of climbing indoors recently so I took down my rack and grabbed a belay from Craig Holden, after asking around abit to start with, to head outside into the Quarry. Craig is fondly known in th EUMC as short shorts, as he always seems to wear short shorts, although he kept them on to belay as it was cold. I was wanting to try some thing hard, like Artho, but I figured I should warm up first, so I went for Welcome to the cruise. The guide book gives it E1 5b, although it did say it was reclimbed at E2 5c. Lots of routes have had to be reclimbed in Ratho quarry thanks to the blasting for the M8, which runs next to it, damaging the rock and making some routes unstable.
The route takes a series of gooves, split by ledges. It started off pretty easy up until a large slopping ledge where I had to get a high foot, palm off and reach up to a large jug, which took quite abit of working out. The top was a steep corner with a crack in it, which luckily provided some good gear, as the gear below this felt a long way away. I didn't find this as hard as the previous crux section, although it was still quite tricky. Craig seconded it in style, his first E grade second. It was starting to get dark, as I took a long time and the days are still pretty short, so we went inside to sample some of the classic Ratho stamina pieces and some pretty good bouldering.
I didn't get any pictures today but this is something that Joanna drew...