Maeshafn climbing

Crag: Maeshafn
Routes: Rambler (S 4a:led), Flying Block (E1 5b:sec), Royal Plume (E2 6a:sec), Knotty Problem/Laxix (E1 5b:sec), The Corner (E1 5b:sec)
Even though I've been coming here for 30 years there are still some routes I haven't done. I've no great desire to lead them, but a quick training session with rope above worked well today in unexpectedly cold and drizzly (very light) conditions. I led up Rambler, which has never been any more than VD and still isn't, then we did Flying Block with its strenuous crux over the block using a side pull. Easier climbing above. Royal Plume is desperate in my view, really hard almost throughout with a particularly tricky crux which is simultaneously technical and strenuous, and it remains technical above it: surely undergraded. We then did the mantelshelf start of Knotty Problem which leads logically into the right-curving crack taken by the E4 of Laxix. This is an obvious combination, no more than E1 5b. Finally, the awkward E1 of the Corner, which has tricky and constricted moves up the corner to a hard traverse right on small holds to an easier finish.