..to where the street's concrete shows dog paws, where school enscription moments are announced by dripping letters from a black alcohol marker on a plastic bag wavering at the gate, where drunk people in straight daylight pee against the door of a closed bar and Ennio Morricone's themes seem to whistle as the wind rushes over dry grounds...

We make a way through a village desert that makes you feel cold, a forsaken place where bakeries seem way further than 200km from France's freshly baked baguettes and croissants. But the poor soil can't stop the poppies from growing, and we're lucky in our homelands to have constant water flowing in our rivers, yet here is some flow too now.

Then the Cornudella town is left, later the village is far off behind the lowest rock bands as we approach the still flowing mountain water where birds whistle. Every bend there's steep rock, another handshake from the climbing gods, that you thankfully accept and promise you'll try to deserve.. Even more so it makes you want to take off your shirt and go climbing in the rain.

You do this one evening, ninja-ing up on a razorblade crimp with just enough width for three fingers and half your pinkie, on a classic which is not polished at all. My right shoulder turns all over to get my thumb shooting up to a little pointy feature high above my head. Starting to fall away from the wall the thumb arrives at the last moment and pushes me back desperately.

Balancing on a straight wall you look for the next even smaller, now sloping crimp, the only one helping you up in Muerte del Sponsor. It looks impossible. Abracadabadabra I'm gonne reach out and grab ya, though I feel like a wizard who has to cast a bit more complicated spell. Then a miracle. And just the start of a journey to the top, killing me softly with crimpers.

Oh boy did I scream 35m up when screwing up the last hard moves but correcting with such desperate crossover, flag and compressing my way back from the shoulder onto a sloping crack.. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, dynamic, you might find, the jug that you need. Among all the chalked razorblades the best hold might not be a chalked one. One lesson.

Yesterday morning we didn't know we would be here. I had send a screenshot of the weatherforecast for Siurana and things went quick. Now, still, the Siudrama weather forecast gives terrible screams and a slight chance of pain. And full sun. Climbing in the sun in Siurana is always a bad idea, even in winter and even more so when the month of May starts. That's the adagio at least. That's why nearly all climbers by now have left the hills.

Yet we are here, just like Daila Ojeda, all shining in the sun with our sweaters and jackets. Besides her there's barely anyone in the King's Valley of El Pati. A French couple, the girl casually putting in the draws in Pren Nota for the guy (elusive-8th-grade-alarm), two Swedish ladies warming up in Ramadan (elusive-8th-grade-alarm), Mexican crusher Larissa Arce (elusive-8th-grade-alarm), the experienced unstoppable Austrian climbing team trainer being teamed up with South-Korean superstar Jain Kim (elusive-9th-grade-alarm),.. all slaking their thirst for rocks.

Recommended topo: Siurana by Natalia Campillo and David Brascó.