*The following details a press trip. All opinions are my own*
I remember two Nottingham visits in January 2015. One was to attend a show and another didn’t have any specific plans attached to it. It wasn’t until I got there that I found out my newly 30-year-old cousin was celebrating his birthday at a nearby climbing centre. At the time, climbing looked easy to me. I hadn’t done it before, but how hard can it actually be? In front of 10-15 of my family members, I discovered exactly how difficult it is.
In early 2015, I had no back muscles. I was lacking with my weight training and was almost exclusively focusing on chest, arms and shoulders in my spare room gym setup. It wasn’t until I was halfway up a wild angled wall in front of my cousins that I realised I should have been working on my lats as much as I had my biceps.
I spent the rest of that session helping the little ones (age 3-10) because I couldn’t face the truth that I was wholly unprepared for the day. I wasn’t wearing the right trousers. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t have the strength for the tricky walls.
Shortly after I invested in a home pull up bar and tried to make sure that if any last-minute climbing scenarios ever came up again, I wouldn’t embarrass myself again.
Fast forward to 2021 and not a single short-notice climbing situation has occurred since. Actually, no climbing situations have come about in that time at all. While I’ve stepped up my gym game, I have to admit that I stopped doing pull ups about a year ago when I realised the pressure of my lat activity was weakening the kitchen door frame. (I’ve got no excuse for not doing it at the gym).
Now I’m the parent to a very nearly-5-year-old and a 3.5-year old and FINALLY it’s climbing time. Hollie got an invite to go and explore a child-friendly facility over at the other side of town. Our extremely active boys were hyped up from the moment we mentioned it and we were excited to show them exactly what it was all about.
Put simply: we’ve never experienced anything like it before. Clip ‘n Climb’s Nottingham is a fun, bright and inviting
The process is as follows:
- Enter
- Remove any loose things in your pockets
- Get strapped up
- Listen to a tutorial about how to clip (and unclip)
- Climb
It’s all very simple and once you’ve done a couple of clips and unclips, you’ll soon be trying out all of the three difficulty levels of walls at their facility. The staff are always on-hand to help you with the climb, advising you good walls for your ability level and being on-hand if you need any help for anything.
Every single wall is completely different, so each one really feels like a challenge. Throughout the hour-long session, me and the boys tried pretty much all of the level 1 and 2s there and couldn’t get enough of it. The boys especially enjoyed being able to get themselves halfway up the walls and flying themselves down, while I much preferred climbing down (instead of having to face a monstrous drop to the ground).
We’re drawing up plans for future birthday party ideas for the boys and this is absolutely on the list after our experience.
It’s only afterwards that I discovered that Clip ‘n Climb is a titan in the climbing game, and they have locations literally throughout the world. There’s so many dotted about the place, so it doesn’t matter if you’re near us and want to pass by one in Derby, down south and want to go to the Tonbridge one, as there are plenty to explore.
Find Clip ‘n Climb’s Nottingham branch 2B, Ash Court, Phoenix Business Park, Nottingham NG8 6AR. Check their website for all the details.
