After work today I drove through the remnants of Hurricane Katya to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena… there, I learned to belay.

Belaying is the art of standing at the bottom of a climb, holding the end of a rope. The climber is on the other end of the rope. Should the person on the other end fall off the wall, the only thing stopping him or her from crashing to the ground is the belayer. So the belayer must stay alert, pull in the rope as the climber gets higher, andbe ready to arrest the fall of the climber.

When I wasn’t actively belaying, I was looking at these guys on the free climb wall, in total awe!