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To follow on from Neil's route report he's also given us a primer of deep water soloing and why he enjoys Pembroke more than most..
 Deep Water Soloing is an exciting and fast-growing style of climbing, which has enabled climbers to tap further into the unexplored potential of some of the world’s sea cliffs. The beauty of DWS lies in its simplicity: it is fast and free like bouldering, with ropes being ditched in favour of the ocean, which is used as a giant crash pad. The first activity took place in the mid 1980s on the limestone cliffs of Swanage in the UK, but DWS has now become a global phenomenon, with countries such as Majorca and Vietnam offering mind-blowing splashdown experiences.
The crags to be developed first for DWS were the ones that could be reached easily, either by scrambling down or abseiling in. These usually have a broad tidal window, to minimize the obvious risk of landing on something rather more solid. However, more recently it has dawned on activists that many of the finest DWS treasures are the best hidden. Who knows how many wild overhanging walls are to be found in the depths of caves, which are impossible to reach by abseil? The most common strategy to address this notion is to charter a boat, but some DWS junkies have even been known to swim into caves with their shoes and chalkbag sealed in a dry-bag! As such, some new and unorthodox methods have been devised to allow this new genre of climbing to expand. The message is that the more effort you are prepared to put in, the greater the potential rewards, and there is perhaps no other area where this could be more true than the limestone sea cliffs of Pembrokeshire in Britain. In Pembroke a compelling number of stunning steep walls and caves have remained unclimbed, due to the major difficulties of gaining access. The water is usually too cold to ‘dry-bag’ in and access by boat simply isn’t practical. Add to this, the huge tidal range (many of the routes have less than a metre of water below them at low tide) and clearly you have a logistical challenge that gives big-walling a run for its money.
Having put up new DWS routes all over the world, in areas that offer choice pickings on a plate, I sometimes wonder why I find myself being drawn so compulsively to Pembroke. I guess it’s the fact that that the routes are so hard to reach that explains the attraction. I’ve had to come up with some crazy schemes, such as rigging tyrolean traverses, aiding my way downwards and tensioning fixed lines in order to reach the best routes I’ve ever climbed. Some would argue that DWS is supposed to be pure and free, and that all the hassle of rigging ropes would seem to defeat the object, and this is certainly a valid point of view. But for me it makes it all the more worthwhile when the send eventually comes. On some occasions I have returned to Pembroke four times, just to get the perfect blend of tide and weather conditions to climb one project. Those hours spent hours wrestling with jumars and freeing jammed ropes seem all the more worthwhile when you finally get that window of opportunity to ditch all the clutter and go for it. But above all else, it is this type of free- thinking that I love most in climbing. To take on the new breed of DWS routes in Pembroke you need to draw on a bizarre range of skills. Aid and trad climbing abilities must be combined with nautical and meteorological knowledge before you can even get yourself in a position to start climbing. But let’s not forget that the routes themselves are getting harder and steeper too, so you’ll need your bouldering strength and sport climbing stamina in order to stand on the summit! It may not be everyone’s choice of medicine, but for me it doesn’t get much better.
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