With the weather being somewhat unpredictable and the sunlight hours limited Sally and I decided to make a little afternoon trip down to Blackburn's BoulderUK, the brainchild and venture of Lancashire legend Ian Vickers.
We got there reasonably quickly and without any major hiccoughs (apart from Sally's brief beguilement with having to wave at the Asian man she cut up in the queue of traffic) and ended up at BoulderUK within 55minutes of setting off. Parked up outside the local Salvo Army centre (which looked bery appealling what with all the scum bags hanging around) and headed in...
The set up is cool. It's not a huge spot so luckily it was quiet the whole time we were there...
after signing in and reading the safety rules (which we abided by THE ENTIRE TIME) we could wait no more and got to it.
CRUSH was not the word. I was on it. After a rest day and a good warm up I was ready for a hard session and quickly flashed a number of V3/4's onsight. I was psyched to say the least. Sally was on it too...of course. She cruised up pretty much all of the same problems as I did throughout the afternoon. Good work Sally.
After pottering around on more V3/4 problems I spotted a really tasty looking problem in the corner of the room. Steep powerful looking start, postive crimps and long dynamic reaches to good holds ... just my style! Thinking nothing of it I jumped on, pulled on the starting holds, they felt good. I cruised the first couple of moves up out of the steep overhanging prow and then after a quick rest and a moment to compose myself on a good hold, despatched the top moves through the overhanging finish. No bother. Went over to the board to check the grade ... V5! Shit me. My first V5 Flash. Nearly fell over I was that shocked!
Well, after that I was "super psyched" to say the least. There was clearly some serious bouldering to be done. After eyeing up a couple more V5's and two V6's that I was keen to try we got to it again.
I sent 3 or 4 more V5 problems and one V6. There was also an AWESOME V6/7 problem that ran out through a tunnel type feature. It had a delicate move to a stalacite, sweet hands off rest, overhanging blocks, heel hooks, toe hooks, heel toes, smears and slopers and ... I was like a bloody kid in a sweet shop. Both Sally and I had a few good goes on it...I did every move in three seperate sections but unfortunately couldn't muster the energy to link all three sections up at once...definitely one to try again if I'm back in the near future!
There was also another good bouldering room upstairs as well as a climbers shop (that had a sale on ... oops, might have spent some pennies there...sorry mr bank manager)
After a solid three and a bit hours of formidable bouldering effort we were well and truly frazzled. The psyche was still there but our fingers and strength reserves were dissipated to the extent that we called it a day.
THE VERDICT: Great success. In retrospect the gradings might have been a little (only a little) soft, with the problems maybe needing downgrading half a grade or so. The shop was awesome, the staff helpful and friendly, the atmosphere was calm and positive. I would definitely head back down there for another session of crushing on plastic even if it was just to fall on to the SUPER SPRINGY mats.
Cheers BoulderUK.
Liam.
**Apologies, poor light + poor camera = poor picture quality**
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