In between that warm time and this slightly colder snowy time, lots of exciting things have happened in the Castle Garden. In early autumn, as the summer flowers began to die, our team of staff and volunteers were out seed collecting.  Although we weren’t the only ones! The birds, fearless of our giant scare crow, and its miniature underlings (mainly aimed at slugs), ate all the sunflower seeds, massacring the giant heads in the process! This means we will have to rely on seed swaps if we want more sunflowers brightening up the edge of the Forest garden next season.

I woke up early on Saturday morning and headed off to Reading with my Castle Squad team mates. We were psyched to check out the problems, as BlocFest always delivers amazing climbing. I was in the open category so got a chance to have a good look at all the blocs before I started.

The Reading centre had stripped the entire boulder area of problems so the only routes were the blue Holdz ones. This made it much easier to scope them out.

Last weekend I had the chance to attend the BMC Injury Prevention Symposium in Sheffield. Both Saturday and Sunday were packed with interesting lectures that gave us an overview of the different types of injuries that are common to climbers. We even had the chance to go for a little boulder in The Edge with the mighty Steve McClure.

After many hours spent chasing invoices, looking at spreadsheets and working out emission factors we've finally published our Environmental Report for 2011. You can download it here. It's important to me that this information is available so that other businesses can learm from our experiences and help reduce their own carbon footprint.

If you just want a quick summary of the key facts, read on: