Valerie climbing JT (V0- 4b) at Robin Hood’s Stride.
I didn’t know how Leo was going to feel about his first camping trip last weekend. He’s not yet two years old and being taken away from his home and routine to spend a long weekend camped in a field at night and bouldering in the day might have been a bit too much for him. My main concern was that he would be nervous of the tent. I wondered how Valerie and I could coax Leo into what might seem to him to be a giant orange monster. In the end Leo had a wonderful time camping. He enjoyed banging the tent pegs in, exploring the campsite and playing with one of the campsite owners’ children. Thanks to Valerie’s amazing packing, he had to keep him happy a selection of his favourite toys and books as well as the clothes he needed to keep him comfortable on what quite cold nights. He was initially reluctant to stand on our inflatable camping mats, but he bravely overcame it.
What also made our trip a success was that we had chosen to boulder at the family-friendly Cratcliffe and Robin Hood’s Stride. Leo liked clambering about the rocks and running around. He also loved scrambling on, bouncing on, jumping off and lying on the bouldering mat (which we had to encourage him off before we could climb). Some curious young cows at Robin Hood’s Stride freaked him out when they got too close and took a slobbering interest in our bouldering mat, but we hugged and reassured him. Leo being ok with the camping and where we were bouldering helped Valerie and I too as it gave us a chance to relax and enjoy the climbing.
It was really good to see Leo enjoy the trip and to know that this can be the first of many more camping trips to come.
I finally got a chance last weekend to do my first trad leading since my injury and surgery. After getting frustratingly rained off Stanage a few weeks ago, it was great climb in sunshine on Tryfan Bach. A day of climbing on Tryfan Bach’s beautiful slab, its with well-protected, low-grade climbs, was just what I needed to get reacquainted with leading trad and to clear my head.
The crossFIXE range of products is meant to sooth, moisturise and provide maintenance for your skin before and after training. It’s made using all natural, food-grade ingredients by the same people who make the ClimbOn range of skincare products for rock climbers. I was curious to see if the crossFIXE range was as good as ClimbOn and whether it does anything different or better that would encourage me to use it instead of ClimbOn.
When trying out these crossFIXE products I used the same approach and scoring system as I’ve used in my previous reviews of balms for climbers. This uses several different measures of the effectiveness of each balm and gives each a score out of ten (with 1 being poor and 10 being fantastic) against each measure.
Application – how easy the product is to apply to the hands.
Absorbency – how quickly the product absorbs into the skin and/or stops leaving your hands feeling oily or greasy.
Longevity – how long the product keeps your hands feeling nice and moisturised.
Smell – this is my estimation of how pleasant, or not, the product smells. It’s a pretty subjective measure, but it’s important, as your hands may smell of the balm for a while after it’s put on.
SKINourishment, who make the crossFIXE range, state that crossFIXE Hands Crème “is specifically designed to absorb quickly, soothe pain, provide maintenance, and stimulate rapid skin recovery.” They also say that it’s a creamy version of the crossFIXE Hands Tube (reviewed below).
The Hands Crème comes in a tin and in colour and consistently looks like a smooth beeswax balm. It was slightly softer than I had expected from its appearance and readily melts on the fingertips. It spreads over the hands very easily and is absorbed quickly so as to leave your hands feeling soft and moisturised.
The smell of the Hands Crème is slightly medicinal, woody and herby, with a hint of fruit. It’s not over-powering and is quite nice.
Although other climber-specific balms I’ve tried out-perform the Hands Crème in certain ways and there are other balms I rate more highly (e.g. the ClimbOn Adventure Bar), the Hands Crème is a solid, across the board performer. It’s also a good alternative to those other balms if you want a balm that isn’t primarily based on beeswax.
Like the crossFIXE Hands Crème, the crossFIXE Hands Tube is billed as soothing, moisturising, quickly absorbed and as providing skin maintenance and recovery. However, the Hands Tube is primarily based on beeswax and feels and looks more like the ClimbOn Adventure Bar (AKA ClimbOn Bar, Men). One of the main differences between the two balms is that the Hands Tube includes coffee extract and green tea extract like the Hands Crème. The other main difference is the packaging.
Most climbers’ hand balms come as a puck of wax, but crossFIXE Hands Tube is like a monster lip balm. This works fine, but I’m not convinced that this design is any better than the standard puck. The only (slight) advantage is that it’s a little bit easier to apply the Hands Tube to a specific area and that you can do this without getting the balm on your fingers. The disadvantage is that when the balm gets warm and soft, you can need to keep a finger inside the tube to stop the balm sliding back inside.
The crucial question though is whether this balm works on the skin. The answer is that this balm is brilliant. The absorbency is outstanding and among the best of all the balms I’ve tried. Although the Hands Tube leaves your hands a bit shiny when first applied, this shine disappears in about a minute. It’s also easy and quick to apply. The Hands Tube does a fantastic job of moisturising your hands and keeps them feeling good for a long time. The smell is very similar to that of the Hands Crème, but stronger.
The aim of the crossFIXE Muscle Paste is to moisturise and sooth muscle pain. SKINourishment state on their website that it “is ridiculously awesome for muscle soreness, strain, arthritis, and any type of stiffness or strain.” That’s a strong claim and I initially viewed the Muscle Paste with quite a lot of scepticism because it wasn’t obvious to me how it works and so could live up to how it was being billed. SKINourishment’s website says that the Muscle Paste increases circulation to the skin and relaxes muscles, but doesn’t really go into the details of how this happens. My understanding (based, I admit, on a Google search) of this explanation is that blood is drawn to the area where the muscle balm is applied and that this promotes healing, e.g. by increasing the amount of oxygen reaching the site of the problem.
Another possible explanation is that muscle balms such as Muscle Paste interfere with how pain is sensed by stimulating the skin. This is something I’ve recently read about in a great book by top climber Dave Macleod –
“Even the pain signals coming directly from the injury site can be amplified or inhibited before they actually reach the brain. A popular model of the way this occurs is the ‘gate control theory’ of pain…Stimulation of the skin (heat, rubbing, etc.) around an injury site can inhibit pain signals on their way to the brain. Sensory nerves from the skin are linked at the level of the spinal cord to pain sensing nerves from the same area of the body. In other words, they ‘close the gate’ on these pain signals before they reach the brain and cause the sensation we feel.” Macleod, Dave (2015) Make or Break, Roy Bridge: Rare Breed Productions, pp.24-25.
This is obviously not my area of expertise and I would be interested to get comments from anyone with more expertise in this area that can provide a good explanation of how muscle balms are meant to work.
My scepticism hasn’t completely gone away, but I have to admit the Muscle Paste does do something and it does it well. I’ve found that stiff and sore muscles did rapidly feel much better after applying it. For example, a minute or two after having applied it to my stiff and aching neck, the ache subsided and my neck felt more relaxed.
I’ve been surprised and impressed by Muscle Paste, but suspect that there are clear limits to what it can do. Although I’ve not had a chance to try it in this way, I suspect Muscle Paste “soothes” and “relieves” aches and mild pain, but wouldn’t be of limited help if you were in agony.
Although it’s described as a paste, Muscle Paste feels like a slightly oily wax. It comes in a small plastic pot that is only big enough to allow in a couple of fingertips and this makes applying it a bit time consuming. This design also seems unhelpful when you consider that there are likely to be times when you want to apply the Muscle Paste to a fairly large area and need to get a relatively large amount onto your hand. On the plus side, it’s easy and quick to apply.
Its smell is spicy and a little sharp. I’ve had people tell me that they really like the smell, but it might not be to everyone’s taste and does linger a bit after application.
My only real criticism is that it leaves the skin feeling slightly waxy. Otherwise, this is an interesting and surprisingly effective product.
Conclusion
The crossFIXE range is certainly as good as ClimbOn, with the crossFIXE Hands Tube equalling the best products in the ClimbOn range. There are two main differences that might encourage you to use crossFIXE over ClimbOn.
The first is the difference in ingredients and what this means for the characteristics of the products. The crossFIXE Crème provides a really good alternative for someone who doesn’t want to use one of the many beeswax-based balms on the market. It also means differences in handling and performance between specific products, e.g. the ClimbOn Crème and crossFIXE Hands Crème are quite different. In addition, ClimbOn and crossFIXE products don’t smell the same and this might sway you to buy one or the other.
The second difference is that the ClimbOn range doesn’t include a Muscle Paste and I think it is worth giving this Muscle Paste a go to see if it works for you if you regularly suffers aches and pains (if it’s very regular, you might also want to see a physiotherapist or a doctor).
The crossFIXE range works well and they are products that I’m going to keep returning to.
Declaration: SKINourishment gave me a free sample of the crossFIXE Hands Crème, the crossFIXE Hands Tube and the crossFIXE Muscle Paste specifically for me to review. This hasn’t influenced my opinion.
Me climbing Badger Rock in Kentmere in the Lake District.
Badger Rock is a famous boulder that I’d been eager to climb for years. Its reputation is built on providing great climbing, across a range of grades, in a picturesque, quiet Lake District valley. If that wasn’t enough to make it popular, Badger Rock is also only about ten minutes walk from a car park. I’ve been waiting for a chance to climbing on Badger Rock since I first saw it three years ago when walking the classic Kentmere Horseshoe. Last weekend looked like it might finally be my chance to climb on the Badger, but all of my hopes of climbing rested on it staying dry.
It rained. It felt a little predictable. You need a lot of luck to get the right conditions to boulder in the Lake District in October, particularly if you are a London-based climber and have to tie yourself down to a visit over one, fixed weekend. My luck with the weather has also not been great this year. I was disappointed, but did what I often do when I want to go rock climbing – I went for a walk instead.
My walk took me from Green Quarter in Kentmere, up the hill by Nunnery Beck and over into Longsleddale. I then followed Longsleddale up to Brownhowe Bottom. From there, I climbed Adam Seat and Harter Fell before descending the ridge over Kentmere Pike, Goat Scar and Shipmann Knotts. This is one of the quieter parts of the Lake District and I’d never been into the beautiful, quiet Longsleddale before. It was a great walk, made even better by the stunning Autumnal reds and oranges on the fells. Yet during the walk I continued to hope that tomorrow would be dry enough to enable me to boulder.
It rained. It rained that night and the next morning. I kept on hoping that bouldering would be possible if I just waited for the conditions to improve. I got ready at a leisurely pace and periodically glanced at dry stonewalls for a clue as to whether the rock was drying out. In the end, hope and my desire to climb got the better of me and I headed out for Badger Rock.
I was really happy when I found that enough of Badger Rock was dry. I also found that Badger Rock lived up to its reputation. The problems were varied, fun and on good quality rock. The most nerve racking climbing was descending from the top of Badger Rock the first time. The most obvious way down was soaked and slippy and I had to find a slightly different route back to the ground. The location in a field overlooking Kentmere was also lovely, although the damp grass made for wet and very cold toes (as well as very clean rock shoes).
I finished my climbing feeling tired, content and with a desire to come back on a dry summer evening when I could finish climbing on Badger Rock.
More information
Bouldering on Badger Rock, and elsewhere in Kentmere, is described in Boulder Britain by Niall Grimes as well as a guide on the LakesBloc website.
The Straibo Hoody from Arc’teryx has the style to work well as a casual hoody and the technical features to perform brilliantly as a hoody for bouldering.
Bouldering at Fontainebleau in the Straibo Hoody
When I bought the Straibo Hoody early in 2015, Arc’teryx was selling it as part of their Whiteline collection for skiing and snowboarding. Their sales pitch was that the Straibo Hoody combined “contemporary looks with performance fabrics and design” to provide a jacket that “travels from a day on the mountain to a relaxed evening in town.” In other words, Arc’teryx had crossed an urban-style hoody with a technical, mid-layer fleece to produce something that was practical without looking geeky. Since then Arc’teryx seem to have stepped back a bit from promoting the practical, mountain applications of the Straibo Hoody and are now selling it as part of their 24 lifestyle (i.e. urban) range of clothing. All of this makes me think that Arc’teryx’s marketing department hasn’t realised what the Straibo Hoody really is. It might be good snowboarding wear and it certainly looks pretty good as casual wear around town, but what the Straibo Hoody really excels at is being a bouldering hoody.
Strangely, it’s probably its origins as skiing or snowboarding wear that helps make the Straibo Hoody good for bouldering. As the Straibo Hoody is designed to work under a jacket, the fit is trim and the elastic cuffs and waist are snug and low profile. All of which means that there isn’t excess fabric to get in the way when climbing and that heat is kept in. Yet this trim fit isn’t constrictive. Arc’teryx have managed to give the Straibo Hoody great freedom of movement through a combination of cut (including gusseted underarms) and stretchy fabric. As an added bonus for a lanky climber like me, the body and arms are long and so there is less chance of bare bellies and forearms when doing stretchy climbing moves.
The cuff of Arc’teryx’s Straibo Hoody.
The excellent cut of the Straibo Hoody continues in the hood. It manages to be close fitting, but not restrictive. It also manages to move easily with the head despite having no means of adjusting the fit. A nice additional touch is a small, unstiffened brim that provides a little bit more protection and some additional style. When the hood is down, the brim and the close fit also mean that the collar is high and snug.
Me wearing the Straibo Hoody.
The rest of the design of the Straibo Hoody adds to its utility as a bouldering hoody. The two large hand pockets are in the location of the pockets of a casual hoody and this helps the Straibo Hoody look like a piece of casual clothing. However, they have the advantage for climbing of being zippered so your wallet and keys don’t fall out when climbing a roof or overhang. These pockets are too low to work well if you were wearing a harness or rucksack hip belt, but that doesn’t matter really matter for bouldering.
Me in the Straibo Hoody.
The material is Arc’teryx’s own Cobblecomb fleece. It’s stretchy, comfortable and warm. This fabric has a brushed interior and a smooth outer that was probably originally meant to help with layering it under a ski or snowboarding jacket. However, this smooth exterior is also useful for a bouldering hoody as it is likely to help with abrasion resistance. Arc’teryx certainly describe the Straibo Hoody as durable and in the time I’ve been using it I’ve only noticed a tiny bit of bobbling on the lower forearm where it’s more likely to pick up wear from being rubbed against rock. Double stitching throughout the jacket should also make it tougher.
The smooth exterior face of the Cobblecomb fleece is put to good use in the hood. Here the fleece is doubled-up, with the smooth exterior lining the hood. This makes it twice the thickness of the rest of the jacket, increasing the hood’s warmth and comfort. It cleverly also makes the hood easier to pull up and down than it would have been if it were the brushed side of the fleece up against your hair. Slightly oddly the fleece is replaced at the nape of the neck, on the inside, by some mesh. My guess is that this is meant to improve comfort, but I’m not convinced it’s necessary.
The inside of the Straibo Hoody.
The one thing that people might see as a disadvantage with the use of Cobblecomb fleece in the Straibo Hoody is that it’s not windproof. This isn’t too much of an issue when bouldering, but it may need a belay jacket throwing over the top if you are waiting around or spotting on a winter’s day.
There is really only one other issue with the Straibo Hoody. It’s something I’m really surprised about because the design is generally so good that I can’t believe Arc’teryx made such a basic and odd mistake. The issue is that the chin guard at the top of the main zip is tiny. It’s so tiny that it doesn’t even fully cover the zip. Prior to growing a beard, this didn’t cause me any irritation. Since growing a beard doing the zip all the way up has become a bit riskier and I’ve managed to catch my beard in the zip a couple of times.
Conclusion
The Straibo Hoody has the cut, warmth, comfort and style to make it a brilliant bouldering hoody. At £150, it’s expensive for a hoody, but it’s generally well-designed and great quality.
Alice coaching me on how to climb using the open hand technique.
Injuries have forced me to examine how I climb and to start thinking about how to change my climbing technique so that I reduce the chance of injury. It was a knee injury that originally got me thinking, but recently problems with my hands have jolted me into really looking at the grips I use. I’ve realised that I rely too much on crimping and that I need to use an open-hand grip more if I want to be minimise hand injuries. However, I’ve been struggling to get this grip right and it was only a coaching session a few weeks ago that helped me understand that using an open-hand grip is about much more than what you do with your hands.
It was reading Dave MacLeod’s excellent book Make or Break that made me question whether I crimp too much and ask how I could change my climbing style so that I use an open-hand grip more often. MacLeod made a strong argument for the open-hand grip –
“Finger pulley injuries are the most common climbing related injury, and occur during crimping. In a crimped grip, the pulleys must absorb huge forces to hold the flexor tendons tight against the bones of the fingers. It is actually amazing they don’t injure more easily given what they are subjected to in hard rock climbing. Using an openhanded grip allows the pulleys to be unloaded…openhanding is stronger than crimping on many (but not all) holds. It is often less strenuous and you get injured a lot less.” MacLeod, D. (2015) Make or Break; Don’t Let Climbing Injuries Dictate Your Success, Roy Bridge: Rare Breed Productions, p.37.
Switching to using an open-hand grip sounds fairly straightforward as, in simple terms, it involves keeping your fingers as straight as possible when gripping a hold –
“The fingers should only flex at the joint nearest your fingertip…while the middle joint will be only slightly flexed or completely open depending on your finger lengths relative to each other.” Ibid, p.38.
After reading this I looked properly for the first time at how I was gripping. I recognised that I default to crimping on everything except completely sloping holds. Once I realised this, I tried to use an open-hand grip as much as I could, but my brain seemed to be hard-wired to crimp. I repeatedly caught myself failing to use an open-hand grip during problems and had to make a deliberate effort to use an open-hand grip whenever I grasped a hold. Climbing this way felt alien and more likely to lead to my hand slipping off. It was these difficulties, and my concern that I was just as injury prone as ever, that prompted me to book another session with Alice Turner.
Sort of like that…although, with practice, my open hand grip should get better and be more natural.
Alice is a mountain instructor and former physiotherapist who had given me a very useful coaching session earlier in the year on how to climb so that I reduced the chance of injuring my knee again. Now I asked if she could coach me on how to climb in a way that reduces the chance of causing trauma to my hands.
Alice helpfully and patiently took me through the fundamentals of the open-hand grip before offering tips and suggestions as I tried to use it bouldering.
Her coaching enabled me to grasp that my mistake had been focusing so much on how I was using my hands that I didn’t think about my body position and feet. Alice showed me that using an open-hand grip requires the body to sink down, the feet to be lower on the rock or wall and the arms to be more extended. She explained that this is because the body needs to be in a position than enables the optimum direction of pull on the handhold. In an open-hand grip the palm needs to be close to the rock or wall, with the fingers main point of contact on the hold being around the first finger joint. As I practiced and Alice gave me pointers, I came to understand what Alice was talking about. It is really much easier to do an open-hand grip if the body is lower in relation to the hands and close to the rock or wall. In particular, it enables you to drag away from the hold and so get a stronger grip.
Alice demonstrating how to climb using the open hand grip.
Putting this new understanding to use was challenging because I found it so far away from my usual climbing style. Normally I would work my feet up high before pushing from my legs and then going for the next set of handholds. I’d usually try for an economy of movement and big step-ups. The style of climbing that Alice was showing me required moving the feet around a lot in order to find the perfect point for hanging off the hold. It also involved more controlled steps and smaller step-ups that were chosen with a need to maintain a good grip with the hands. I had to really concentrate to do this. I also found myself climbing far below my normal level and with forearms that ached from using different muscles than I would use when crimping. Yet it felt brilliant to have finally grasped how to use an open-hand grip.
I finished the coaching session with Alice understanding how I need to change my climbing style to reduce the risk of injury. It means building a better climbing technique from the ground up by challenging myself to climb as I should and carefully, thoughtfully applying this to every move I make. It’s going to take a while, but I know that it will be worth it in the end.
Further information
There’s a useful thread on one of the forums on UKClimbing in which climbers discuss their experiences using an open-hand grip and offer thoughts on how to do it.
Lastly, Alice suggested that if I wanted to see how a professional climber does open-hand climbing, then I should watch the video Patience featuring Lynn Hill.
My climbing trips this Spring have had cold winds, some bright sun and (thankfully) no rain. This has given me the chance to really get back into climbing on rock and to do some great climbs. It feels like I’ve warmed up for the rest of my climbing year.
Giddy produces brilliant balms that manage to pull off the trick of moisturising hands while not weakening calluses.
Giddy Hard Lotion, Balm and Salve.
My son loves opening the mail. It’s probably because there is something intrinsically fun in ripping open envelopes and pulling apart parcels to discover what’s inside. Sometimes he discovers something fun, although mostly he finds a bill for me or yet another request to switch broadband provider. Recently he enjoyed opening a parcel from North Carolina to find shiny tins of balm from Giddy. Each time we opened up a tin my son would say “that’s lovely!” at the fresh and zinging smell of the balm.
The back-story
Giddy started in a college dorm room. Student Tyler Ward had tried most of the remedies for his acne given to him by dermatologists and found none really worked. This was when he developed his own effective treatment using natural ingredients. Word spread about his natural face scrub and it proved a hit on campus. Tyler’s means of learning a little spending money at college grew into Giddy and a range of skincare products (Tyler’s full telling of the origins of Giddy is on the Giddy blog).
The ingredients
Giddy declares that its ingredients are made in America, are eco-friendly and mostly organic. Giddy provide a helpful explanation of what each ingredient is and why they use it on their website.
Most balms for climbers have beeswax or cocoa as their primary ingredients, so it’s unusual that the main ingredients of Giddy balms are sunflower oil and carnauba wax. Carnauba wax comes from the leaves of a palm native to Brazil. It’s used in cosmetics because it’s hypoallergenic (i.e. causes fewer allergic reactions) and a moisturiser. It’s also insoluble in water and melts at a high temperature. This higher melting point is why carnauba wax is used to coat sweets to ensure that they don’t melt in your hand. It also means that Giddy balms melt less readily when you apply them. Giddy says that this makes their balms less greasy than balms mostly based on beeswax.
There is still some beeswax in Giddy balms, as well as cocoa butter and several different types of oils. The beeswax acts as a humectant. It attracts moisture in the air, draws it into the skin and locks it in there to both treat dry skin and prevent skin drying out. Beeswax is also said to help wound healing by being anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial and anti-allergenic as well as being a germicidal antioxidant. In addition, it’s a source of Vitamin A (so good for cell development) and is said to create a protective coating for your skin. The beeswax also binds together and emulsifies the oils in the balm.
One of these oils is wheat germ oil and Giddy has some interesting things to say about why this it’s used –
“we wanted to ensure that Giddy balm clogged your pores. What kind of a skin care company would want to do that to their customers? If you watch commercials – think of all the times they talk about how the oils and creams “penetrate deep”. Well, they are talking about penetrating your pores. As climbers, we like our thick skin. We work hard for it. For that reason, we purposely added Organic Wheat Germ Oil (refined, and free of gluten proteins) to clog your pores so that the other light oils (Organic Sesame Seed Oil, Organic Sunflower Seed Oil) wouldn’t be able to “penetrate deep”. It’s really neat: if you clog the pores and use light oils, it heals the top layer of skin and doesn’t get rid of that hard earned “thick skin!””
It’s a neat approach to solving the main issue climbers have with taking care of the skin on their hands. Abrasion, chalk and the elements dry out and damage your skin and so you want something to moisturise and repair them. However, you don’t want something that moisturises so much that the skin (particularly the calluses) get soft and so more prone to getting damaged.
In assessing whether this approach actually works in practice, I’ve used the scoring system (out of 40) that I’ve used in my earlier reviews of climbing balms.
As I said, the first thing that struck me when I opened up the tins of Giddy balms were the really amazing smells. Most balms I’ve tried have smelt woody, herby, spicy or a mixture of these things. Giddy balms have a zing and freshness that makes them stand out. This smell is initially quite strong when you rub the balm over your hands, but it fades to a much more subtle smell in about ten minutes.
The four different types of smell (cedar mint, cooling mint, lavender and sweet orange) are achieved by using different essential oils. Each smells exactly like you imagine it should (i.e. not artificial). I also really like that this range of smells (for what is otherwise the same balm) means that most people should find at least one type of balm that they like the smell of.
Giddy say that this balm is a “multi-purpose product can be used to treat flappers, blown tips, scrapes, cuts, abrasions, soothe burns, rashes, raw skin, cracked skin, cracked cuticles, road rash, abrasions, dry skin, poison ivy and any skin issue that needs moisturized and nourished.” I haven’t tried it out for all those uses (thankfully I haven’t had road rash or touched poison ivy since I started using these balms), but I have found Giddy balms really effective after climbing and as something to use to keep my hands in a good condition day-to-day.
The skin on my hands had been going through a bad patch before I started using Giddy balms. I had peeling skin around my fingertips and areas of skin that looked like a dried-out lake. My hands have been a lot better since using Giddy balms. The moisturizing effect is excellent, with my hands staying nice and moisturized through the day. Plus, Giddy seems to have pulled off the clever trick of creating a balm that moisturizes while allowing calluses to stay to protect the hands.
They have also succeeded in making a balm that is less greasy or oily than some balms based on beeswax or cocoa butter. Unfortunately, Giddy balm recipe has traded oiliness for waxiness. For about 10 to 15 minutes after putting the balm on my hands have a slight shine and feel like they have a light coating of wax on them. It’s a slightly odd sensation, but it does fade away and that other balms can leave your hands oily for the same sort of time or for longer.
The use of carnauba wax instead of beeswax makes the Giddy balms harder than other climbing balms. A beeswax-based balm will melt at body temperature and this makes it easier to apply. The Giddy balm doesn’t melt in the hand in the same way and so you need to put more effort into rubbing it over your hands when applying it. This isn’t a big issue and some people may even prefer a harder balm. I can also see the Giddy balm being more practical in hot weather when a beeswax balm could go too soft.
The Giddy hand balm in comes in 0.5oz/14g and 1oz/28g sizes. The 14g size is just the right size to be both useful and to drop into a pocket for when you need it.
This is a lovely lip balm. As soon as you put it on your lips you get a sharp hit of peppermint that lasts for about 10 minutes. It’s packed with ingredients to sooth and repair your lips. It smells really nice too.
In addition to peppermint, it comes in spearmint, lavender and sweet orange varieties.
The aim of balms like Giddy’s Joint and Tendon Balm is to relieve pain, tenderness and stiffness associated with injuries. My understanding of how they do this is that they essentially trick the body into feeling differently. Top climber Dave Macleod explains that products of this sort do this by stimulating the skin and so interfering with how pain is sensed –
“Even the pain signals coming directly from the injury site can be amplified or inhibited before they actually reach the brain. A popular model of the way this occurs is the ‘gate control theory’ of pain…Stimulation of the skin (heat, rubbing, etc.) around an injury site can inhibit pain signals on their way to the brain. Sensory nerves from the skin are linked at the level of the spinal cord to pain sensing nerves from the same area of the body. In other words, they ‘close the gate’ on these pain signals before they reach the brain and cause the sensation we feel.” Macleod, Dave (2015) Make or Break, Roy Bridge: Rare Breed Productions, pp.24-25.
The ingredient that I suspect is doing this in the Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm is menthol. Giddy explain on their website that –
“In the same way that hot peppers trigger your body’s heat receptors without actually inducing a chemical heat change, menthol tricks your body’s cold receptors into triggering. This reaction in turn activates a cooling sensation that helps to promote numbing of minor aches and pains.”
However it works, the Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm does a pretty good job of relieving pain and tenderness. This balm readily melts under the fingertips, making it easy to get it out of the small tin it comes in as well as easy and quick to apply. The Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm has a sharp smell of menthol with a hint of citrus or ginger.
My main criticism of it is that the absorption is poor. The balm stays on the skin like a slightly waxy layer. Some other balms can leave your skin oily o waxy for a while if you just use too much of them and it’s possible this is what’s been happening with the Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm. I’m going to see if I can find a balance between putting on enough to be effective and not overdoing it.
Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm.
Conclusion
The Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm does a pretty descent job of relieving pain and tenderness and is easy to apply. However, it could do with being better at being absorbed.
The Giddy Cooling Peppermint Lip Balm is a lovely lip balm that gives your lips a minty tingle.
Giddy Hard Lotion, Balm and Salve is one of the best balms I’ve tried. It’s highly effective at looking after your hands and manages to do this without obviously weakening calluses. It’s harder than a lot of other balms and, although this makes it slightly harder to apply, that might be a feature you want from a balm. Plus, these balms come in a variety of great smells that will be sure to be liked by toddlers.
Declaration: Giddygave me free samples specifically for me to review. This hasn’t influenced my opinion.
What a great weekend of climbing in the Peak District. I did a selection of varied and interesting climbs, the sun shone (mostly), it wasn’t raining (mostly) and there was enough of a breeze to keep the midges at bay.
Delightful cottage with all mod cons, less than five minutes walk from the beach and a short walk from bouldering in a rocky cove.
OK, the advert for the holiday cottage I rented for my family holiday on Anglesey didn’t read like this. Perhaps the ad should have. It was great being able to do a little bouldering on the beach and an added selling point for staying in that part of Anglesey.
It was actually a happy coincidence that I happened to be staying close to a small bouldering venue. It was only after I’d booked the cottage that I found out about the bouldering at Lon Isallt Bay when I was researching the bouldering on Anglesey on UKClimbing.
Lon Isallt Bay is a small, pretty and sheltered cove on the Holy Island part of Anglesey between Porth Dafarch and Trearddur Bay. There are a few short sections of crag above a pebble and sand beach. Plus, there’s another small crag on the promontory between Lon Isallt Bay and Porth-y-post.
What I really liked about bouldering there was that the Bay was quiet, the landings were flat and I could just pick a bit of rock to climb about on. It was also relaxing and cool to climb straight off a beach.
On the downside, the crag at the back of the Bay has some loose rock that I had to watch out for. There was also a lot of Sea Ivory lichen on the upper sections of the crag at the back of the Bay and on the crag towards Porth-y-post. At times all these crunchy, brittle tufts made me feel like I was climbing on rock coated in Shredded Wheat and caused me to worry my feet might slip off the rock.
Despite the interesting flora, Lon Isallt Bay was a fun place to climb. I hope to go back, and if next year’s summer holiday takes me to the beach, I will definitely have to see if there is any bouldering nearby.
Directions
Lon Isallt Bay is the next cove with a beach southeast of Porth Dafarch and is just outside the town of Trearddur Bay. On my OS 1:25,000 map it’s named Porth y Corwgl.
The road between Porth Dafarch and Trearddur Bay runs close to Lon Isallt Bay, but it’s not that easy to see if you’re passing in a car. What is more obvious is a house called Moryn that sits alone above the Bay.
In a dip in the road near this house is a footpath to the Bay, but this was impassably overgrown when I was there. An easier alternative is to walk over to Lon Isallt Bay from Porth-y-post.
UKClimbing suggests parking at the bend in the road near Moryn, but to me this seems like a tight spot to park. The alternatives seem to be to park on the road at Porth-y-post or to park at Porth Dafarch. The walk from Porth-y-post is less than five minutes while the walk along the coastal path and then the road from Porth Dafarch is about fifteen to twenty minutes.
My self-rescue skills became rusty because I never got into the sort of trouble where they would be needed. That’s definitely a good thing. My self-rescue skills also became rusty because I never practiced them and didn’t get refresher training as often as I should have. That’s definitely a bad thing. The self-rescue course I did at the weekend highlighted for me just how risky it had been leaving it so long to get a refresher. There were so many aspects of the rope work that I had forgotten and other aspects that I wasn’t particularly confident on. The instructors were great at talking me through the steps of a variety of techniques and putting them to use in different scenarios on the rock. I feel more confident about self-rescue now and determined to practice it more often (although, only in pretend situations).
Whether it’s due to excess brains or empty space, I have a larger than average head. This makes it hard to find headwear that fits. Anything marked “one size fits all” does not include me in the definition of “all”. This might be only an annoyance if I were not a rock climber. I need a helmet to protect my head from falling rocks, dropped bits of gear, smacking my head into a cliff when falling off and banging my head against overhangs (which is a habit of mine). If a helmet is to protect my head properly, then it has to fit properly. Unfortunately, there is only a small selection of helmets that will fit my big head.
Me climbing at Stanage in the Salewa Vega helmet.
My head is a bit over 62cm in circumference but most climbing helmets on the market only go up to a circumference of 61cm. I don’t think I’m the only climber whose head is bigger than 61cm in circumference and so I have written the following helmet guide for climbers with generous heads.
How to Choose a Helmet
The British Mountaineering Council (BMC) has published an excellent guide to helmets https://www.thebmc.co.uk/new-helmet-guide-launched and it’s well worth a read if you want to understand what types of helmet are suited to different activities and how to care for your helmet. There are also good guides to buying a helmet from Outdoor Gear Lab and Switchback Travel. I have summarised below some key points from these guides.
As the BMC guide says, the “best helmet is a good fit, is comfortable, and is affordable.” This obviously means that you need to try a helmet on to see if it fits and not buy it if it moves around or is uncomfortable. If you plan to use your helmet outside the summer months, then make sure it’s big enough to allow you to wear a hat or a hood underneath it. A helmet must also be suitable for whatever climbing or mountaineering activities that you will be wearing it for.
There are three types of helmet and the different characteristics of these three can go a long way to determining if they are what you need.
Hardshells helmets
These helmets have a hard, tough plastic shell with a flexible, internal cradle of fabric webbing.
The best example of a hardshell helmet that could fit anyone was Petzl’s Ecrin Roc. Unfortunately, the Ecrin Roc hasn’t been made for a few years and in general there seem to be fewer hardshell helmets on the market nowadays.
Hardshell helmet are good at withstanding top impacts (e.g. falling rocks) and are durable. The disadvantages with a hardshell helmet is that they offer little protection for impacts around the rim and tend to weigh more.
Foam helmets
The traditional material for foam helmets is expanded polystyrene (EPS) covered by a thin polycarbonate shell. This shell helps to distribute the energy of impacts and protects the EPS. The EPS itself is hard, energy-absorbing plastic foam that fractures and crushes when it takes an impact. This means that EPS helmets have a tendency to crack and dent if treated roughly.
In the last few years, helmets have come on to the market that use expanded polypropylene (EPP) instead of EPS. EPP is also an energy-absorbing, plastic foam. However, whereas EPS permanently compresses when it absorbs an impact, EPP is meant to absorb the energy of an impact better and rebound from the impact. This should make EPP helmets more durable than those made from EPS.
The principle advantage of both EPP and EPS helmets is that they are low weight. The main disadvantage is that they are not very durable.
Me climbing at Stanage in the Black Diamond Vapor Helmet.
Hybrid helmets
Hybrid helmets are basically a halfway house between hardshell and foam helmets. They have a rigid plastic shell that is thicker than the shell on purely foam helmets and comes with a foam inner. They give all-round performance that draws on the advantages of hardshell and foam helmets. In particular, hybrid helmet are more durable than foam helmets. However, hybrid helmets give the greatest protection where the foam is present and on some models the foam doesn’t extend to the rim of the helmet.
Black Diamond Vapor
The Vapor is a foam helmet that comes in two sizes, with the medium/large size fitting heads in the range of 58 to 63cm (23-25 inches). It sits low on the head and provides good 360-degree coverage. The Vapor is stunningly lightweight at only 199g (7oz) in the medium/large size, but is quite heavy in price at £120.
The Black Diamond Vapor.
The construction of the Vapor is interesting and unusual. It has (according to Black Diamond) “a sheet of Kevlar and a series of carbon rods in between co-molded EPS foam” with a thin polycarbonate shell over the top. The idea behind the Kevlar (a material famous for its use in body armour) and the carbon rods is to provide strength without weight. These reinforcements mean that the EPS foam can be thinner and this helps make the Vapor lightweight and give it a much lower profile than other foam helmets.
Black Diamond has also saved weight on the Vapor by cutting back on features. In particular, the harness that secures the helmet to your head lacks a lot of the means to make adjustments that you find on other helmets. The two straps that come down on either side of the helmet to form a V shape below your ears are sewn into the chinstrap rather than being attached by an adjustable buckle. This means that the length of the chinstrap can be adjusted, but there is no means of adjusting the position of the straps on your head. I don’t find this an issue, but it’s possible that someone else might find the straps rub against their ears or their front of their neck.
The back of the Black Diamond Vapor.
The chinstrap has a simple buckle to adjust its length and the tail from this buckle is secured with a thin elastic band.
The adjuster at the back of the helmet that is used to tighten it around the circumference of your head is a light and thin ratchet adjuster. This has two moulded push buttons and is easier to operate with two hands. Despite this harness being quite minimal, it provides a secure fit and is easy to adjust. In addition, the whole harness can be pushed up into the helmet. This neat little feature means that the helmet takes up slightly less space, and there is less of risk of damaging the harness, when the helmet is being transported.
The Black Diamond Vapor with the harness pushed up inside the helmet.
Another thing that makes the Vapor comfortable to wear is the soft padding at key points at the top and front of the inside of the helmet. Unfortunately, this padding soaks up sweat and can’t be removed for cleaning. It’s therefore a good thing then that the Vapor is brilliantly ventilated, with a staggering 21 vents running around the sides and rear and the foam cut with channels to allow airflow. This makes the Vapor is a great helmet for hot weather, but not necessarily a helmet I’d use on a cold and windy day (particularly as it is only just possible for me to wear a thin hat under it).
The inside of the Black Diamond Vapor.
All these ventilation holes and the thinner foam may be why the instructions for the Vapor state that:
“The Black Diamond Vapor is a highly vented, lightweight helmet. It is not recommended for situations that have significant rock fall potential.”
Although I suspect that the risk of a small rock falling through one of the ventilation holes and into your head must be fairly small, the risk is still there. It’s this risk that probably explains why Black Diamond describe the Vapor as a cragging helmet.
In addition, it’s so full of holes and feels so light that whenever I’m using the Vapor it always feels like I’m handling an egg. The Vapor just doesn’t feel robust compared to the helmets I’ve used in the past and so I treat it with extra care when packing it or taking it to the crag.
A slightly odd feature of the Vapor is that the headtorch clips come separately and you have to attach them yourself by pushing them into the foam. The idea seems to be that you can leave them off if you aren’t going to be wearing a headtorch. However, it might also be that it is easier for Black Diamond to leave the clips off when the Vapor is being made.
Salewa Vega
The Vega is a foam helmet that’s available in two sizes, with the large / extra large size fitting heads between 59 to 63 cm (23-25 inches). It sits a bit higher on the head than the Black Diamond Vapor, but still provides good all round coverage.
The Salewa Vega.
The Vega has a fairly thin plastic shell over a foam inner. Unusually, it uses two types of foam. Surrounding the whole inner of the helmet is a dense layer of EPS foam. The forehead and the top of the head are given extra protection with a single, honeycomb piece of EPP foam.
The difference between the Vega and the Vapor is that the Vega manages to be low weight (285g, 10oz) while still feeling fairly robust. The Vega also manages to provide good ventilation while not notably reducing protection through a series of long, thin vents around the front, sides and back.
The level of protection, low weight and set up of the vents make the Vega a good all-rounder.
There are neat design touches too, such the neat combination of clips at the front and elastic at the back to attach a headtorch.
The back of the Salewa Vega.
There are plenty of ways to adjust the fit of the Vega. There’s an adjustment wheel at the back that allows you to tighten or loosen the helmet one handed and with gloves on. The position of this wheel / rear section of the harness can be adjusted up or down via a couple of straps with buckles. The position and length of the straps of the harness and the chinstrap can also be adjusted using buckles. The buckles at the V of the straps can be locked in place while there is simple buckle on the chinstrap. Like the Vapor, an elastic band holds excess chinstrap in place.
The advantage of this set-up is that the position and length of the straps can be locked in place when you have got them just right. The disadvantage is that it can be fiddly and time consuming to get the position and length of the straps as you want them. This is a bit annoying when you need to adjust the fit because, for example, you want to put a hat on under the helmet.
The Vega is a generally well-designed helmet, but there are a couple of things that let it down.
The V of straps come close to both the front and back of my ears. The only way to avoid the straps rubbing against my ears is to have the locking buckles on my jaw and this is a bit uncomfortable.
The limited padding on the inside of the Vega adds to the discomfort. This padding is in a sort of U shape across the top of the helmet and my head rubs directly against the foam because it is in the centre of this U and so not cushioned. This is uncomfortable without the cushioning provided by hair (which I don’t have), a hat or a hood.
The inside of the Salewa Vega
The one good feature of the padding is that it is attached by Velcro and so can be removed for cleaning. Unfortunately, when I opened the box, the padding was stuck in a weird location in the helmet because the Velcro had been sloppily placed. Thankfully, I was able to remove the little Velcro stickers and then stick them in the right locations so that the padding could be correctly positioned.
Grivel Salamander XL
The standard size Grivel Salamander has been a very popular helmet and widely available in Europe. The Salamander XL is really just a bigger version of it that Grivel has marketed as meant for those who need to wear a lot of hats (because they are going somewhere very cold) or have big heads. As the maximum size of the Salamander XL is 66cm, it’s almost over catering for this market.
Me wearing a Grivel Salamander XL helmet.
Grivel has now moved on to the Salamander 2.0 and I’ve heard that they no longer make the Salamander XL. This is a great shame and means that you probably should grab a Salamander XL if you find one (although you might need to be very lucky it has always been hard to find anyone selling the Salamander XL).
The Salamander XL is a hybrid helmet with an outer shell of ABS and an inner layer of EPS. Most of this foam protects the top of the head and there is a thin band of foam around the rim. The Salamander XL is quite high at the front. This works well if you are wearing ski goggles while mountaineering, but I’ve always been a bit concerned about what would happen if I face planted into a rock face while wearing this helmet. The flipside is that the sides and back of the Salamander XL come down quite far and so provide more protection in those areas.
The Salamander XL uses a very similar adjustment system to the Vega, with an adjustment wheel at the back and locking buckles on the harness. This means it has the same advantage / issue as the Vega in that it takes a fair bit of playing around to get the fit right and this fit is then locked in place.
Rear view of the Grivel Salamander XL.
There is padding around the front and top of the inside of the helmet and I find it comfortable to wear. Unfortunately, the ventilation is pretty minimal, with four mesh covered vents on the front and a few narrow, long vents at the back. This makes the Salamander XL better suited to colder weather.
Interior view of the Salamander XL.
At 320g (11oz), it’s the heaviest helmet in the three helmets being reviewed.
There are small metal clips at the front and some elastic at the back to hold a headtorch.
Other options
Black Diamond Vector
The Vector is a cousin of the Vapor and superficially looks quite similar. However, it’s constructed more like a traditional foam helmet, has fewer vents and more adjustment in the harness. It weighs more than the Vapor and doesn’t have the same low profile. The Vector also sits notably higher on the head than the Vapor and this means that it just doesn’t fit me. It’s so high on my head that I lose a fair bit of side protection and look a bit silly. However, someone with a different shaped head may find it a really good option.
Salewa Vayu
The Vayu is the more sophisticated cousin of the Vega. If the Vega were a nice, solidly performing family saloon, the Vayu would be a sleek, hi-tech sports car.
The Vayu is a hybrid helmet with an outer shell of polymer-ceramic composite material that Salewa call Carbon Nano Tech (which is meant to be hard and light) over an EPP inner. The harness does away with adjustment wheel or ratchets for the radical (but probably lighter) option of an elastic strap. I’m a bit sceptical about using an elastic strap as the main way of holding a helmet in place, but I have to admit that it did provide a comfortable and secure fit when I tried the Vayu on in a shop. It’s such a light and sophisticated helmet, that I would have liked to try it out for this review, but there’s only so many helmets I can realistically own and it’s a bit more expensive than the Vega (it’s about £95-120 depending on where you buy it).
Wild Country Focus
The Focus is an EPS foam helmet with a size range of 56-63cm (22-25 inches). It’s lightweight (at 230g or 8oz), has a magnetic buckle on the chinstrap and a “quik-clik” dial for volume adjustment.
Wild Country Fusion
The Fusion is a hybrid helmet that Wild Country describes as combining “a strong polypropylene outer with an EPS layer, attached by simple mechanical joints. This new system provides greater flexibility between layers, making the model less susceptible to damage.” It’s available in two sizes, with the size range of the large being 56-63cm (22-25 inches). It has a “quik-clik” dial for volume adjustment and is described by Wild Country as a great all-rounder.
Trango Zenith
The Zenith is a foam helmet that apparently fits heads up to 64cm (25 inches). There’s a good review of it done by the Gear Institute.
Conclusion
The Vapor is the most comfortable helmet I’ve ever worn. It’s got a great fit, it’s amazingly lightweight and it’s very well ventilated. This makes it a brilliant cragging helmet and good for climbs with a low risk of rock fall (it was perfect for some “sport” via ferrata I did on some baking hot days in Austria). However, you have to pay a lot for that performance and you may not want to pay that much if you want a more robust helmet or one that you can use across a wider range of different types of climbing.
The Vega is a good choice if you are looking for that single, all-rounder helmet. It’s well designed and manages to provide good balance of protection, ventilation and weight. At £65-85 (depending on where you are buying it), it’s also a very good price for what you get. What lets it down is that it may not be the most comfortable helmet for some people (although you may find that it works for you if you have more hair than me).
You will be lucky to find a Grivel Salamander XL, but if you do it’s worth getting it, as this is a tough and reliable helmet. This is also a great helmet for winter (mainly because there is so much space for extra hats and it’s not as well ventilated as other helmets).
With the Vayu, Vector, Zenith, Fusion and Focus also on the market, this means that there are a few helmet options for climbers with big heads. Unfortunately, the range is nowhere near what is available to other climbers so I’d be really interested to hear from any other climbers with ample heads if they find helmets not noted here that fit them or they have experience with the Vayu, Vector, Zenith, Fusion or Focus.
This is an updated version of a post I originally published a couple of years ago.
Climbing in the Peak District at this time of year usually means three things for me. Hoping that it won’t be raining so that I can actually climb. Trying to avoid climbing on rock covered in damp, green lichen that it’s easy for my hand or foot to slip off. Plus, climbing at a level that I can manage and enjoy when I either have a cold or am recovering from one.
Climbing One Inch Arete (VB 4a) in the Little Quarry at Curbar Edge.
The rain that had poured down on the Peak District last Friday disappeared by Saturday to leave clear skies and brilliant sunshine. It was great weather for bouldering and I was really pleased that I could try out bouldering at Curbar Edge for the first time.
The remains of a winter cold meant that I stuck to bouldering on easier problems (marked as green in my guidebook). Unfortunately, Friday’s rain had made some of these problems notably harder by refreshing the lichen. I would occasionally reach for a hold and find myself trying to grip green slime. There were other times that I’d look at a problem and decide its green coating meant I’d have to try it another day.
Despite the unwanted greenery, I think I got lucky. I did a variety of fun and interesting problems, on a beautiful day, in a great setting. That was easily enough to make me forget about being a bit poorly. Hopefully I will lucky again at this time next year.
I love bouldering at Fontainebleau. There are so many wonderful things about it. All those boulders scattered through a pretty wood. A stunning amount of climbing, in a wide variety of forms and often on boulders that weird, beautiful or both. The different characters of the climbing areas. The feeling of community among the climbers. The inland beaches that make for good landings and nice places to have a picnic. That it’s a giant, wooded playground for kids (more about that in my next post).
Fontainebleau’s not somewhere I get the chance to go very often and I always leave wanting to go back.
The woods around Fontainebleau have a reputation as one of the best places in the world to boulder. Thousands of sandstone boulders, with tens of thousands of boulder problems, scattered about a pretty forest that covers some 300 square kilometres. Fontainebleau also has a reputation as being a great place to take kids. That’s a reputation that my wife and I have found to be deserved on our trips over the last few years. It’s been a bit daunting and challenging at times taking a teething baby and then an energetic toddler on climbing trips in a foreign country, but it’s also been fun and taught us things about being parents.
Me bouldering at Canche aux Merciers with my son.
Here are a few of the things we’ve learned about going bouldering in Fontainebleau with a toddler.
Moving about
The bouldering at Fontainebleau can be really accessible. Some of the sectors are only minutes from a car park and others can be reached in a 10-15 minute walk. These walks are usually straightforward and easy. There’s a network of broad tracks through the forest and the landscape is mostly either flat or gently undulating, with only the occasional hill. These tracks will get you most of the way to the bouldering sectors and then it’s often a short walk through the trees to the actual climbing.
This means that you often see parents using a buggy. Valerie and I haven’t done this on our trips to Fontainebleau because a buggy would take up too much space in our car (in which a lot of the space is taken up with bouldering mats) and there are some parts of the woods that are so sandy or boulder-strewn that a buggy is impractical. If you do want to take a buggy, the maps in the Jingo Wobbly guidebook Fontainebleau Fun Bloc might be useful as they have symbols showing which area are and are not buggy-accessible.
Parents push their toddlers through Les Trois Pignons.
As much as possible, we’ve tried to encourage our son Leo to walk. However, as every parent will know, there are times when any toddler just isn’t going to walk. On our last trip to Fontainebleau, we used an ErgoBaby (a soft structure carrier, suitable from about 9 months for back carries) or a cloth wrap to carry him. On our most recent trip, he was just a bit too big for the ErgoBaby, and we were out of practice with the wrap, so Valerie or I simply carried him in our arms or popped him on our shoulders.
Take a bucket and spade
The boulders at Fontainebleau are sandstone and that means lots of sand. This makes for better landings when bouldering and for clearings in the forest that are like inland beaches. These clearings are a great place to set up camp for the day. We would throw a picnic blanket down under some trees on the edge of one of these clearings and Leo would contentedly play in the sand with a bucket and spade, burying his toys.
Leo having fun playing in the sand at Buthiers Piscine.
You don’t have to take a picnic blanket to sit on (you could sit in the sand or on a rock), but it helps. However, even with a picnic blanket, you have to prepare for the sand getting into things and surprisingly amounts of sand being inadvertently brought back to wherever you are staying.
Just mucking about in the woods
The sand is just one of the many things that makes Fontainebleau a giant, wonderful, natural playground. Playing in the woods is great fun for a kid and Fontainebleau makes it even better by adding boulders that they can run between and scramble around on. There are even sometimes tunnels and caves to explore. With other kids playing about at the same time, there is usually a good, relaxed family atmosphere.
A cave by the start of the children’s circuit at Roche aux Sabots.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t the odd hazards in this forest and these can include hornets, snakes and wild boar. However, I’ve never seen any on my trips, probably because we’ve gone to the sort of areas of the forest where the activity of lots of people scares them away.
The one real issue we’ve had is trying to ensure that Leo does not get in the way of climbers. We have done our best to teach him that it’s dangerous for him to stand under someone who is bouldering and he understands this to an extent. However, as any parent knows, the problem is that toddlers get caught up in what they are doing and aren’t always attentive to what’s around them. As the ground in Fontainebleau is sometimes uneven and the terrain rocky in places, there is also the possibility of an excited toddler taking a nasty trip or fall. So Valerie or I have needed to follow Leo quite closely as he plays to make sure he’s safe.
Bouldering for toddlers
Part of keeping this close eye on Leo was attentively spotting him whenever he went climbing on the boulders. The huge number and variety of boulders make Fontainebleau is a bouldering playground for adults and it’s just as much a great place for kids to climb.
Leo bouldering at Roche aux Sabots.
There are even specific bouldering circuits for children at Fontainebleau marked in white and with the letter “E” at the start of the circuit. The idea is that these boulder problems have been selected for beginners and for people with shorter reach. The guidebook Fontainebleau Climbs; the finest bouldering and circuits has a map of these children’s circuits (see page 197 of the 2012 edition) while the guidebook Fontainebleau Fun Bloc includes topo maps of 18 of these children’s circuits.
The children’s circuits are classified into three categories (see grimporama). E- is for children from 5-6 to 7-8 years. E is for children aged 8-9 to 11-12 years. E+ is for pre-teens.
Obviously, these age ranges don’t include toddlers and when I’ve looked at some of these circuits it seems clear that they haven’t been designed with a toddler in mind. They often look like shrunken versions of the adults’ circuits and could be quite challenging for a small child. There are some circuits and some problems that look easier than others and I guess Leo could have tried these out on our last trip. However, he was happy just climbing any interesting bit of rock. Leo particularly liked scrambling around on a rock at Roche aux Sabots that he thought looked like a pirate ship. That’s another great thing about Fontainebleau – that it’s easy for a kid to find a rock that they want to climb, that is the right size for them and is within their abilities. The children’s circuits are a great idea, but I think I might have to wait until Leo’s a bit older before he can really enjoy them.
My son on the “pirate ship” at Roche aux Sabots.
Bouldering (for us)
While one of us was with Leo as he climbed or played, the other would get a chance to climb. Taking turns looking after Leo so that the other one of us could boulder has worked fairly well. The big downside has been there has sometimes been no one spotting whoever was climbing. The only thing we could do when this happened was to be careful, not push it on problems with bad landings and try not to fall off.
It’s clearly much better to be part of a larger group so that whichever one of us is climbing is doing so with several people who are available for spotter duty. That’s worked well when we have had the opportunity to do it.
The different sectors
The characteristics of the climbing sectors in Fontainebleau vary quite a bit and below are my thoughts on how kid-friendly I have found different sectors. I’ve only been to a small fraction of the many sectors and I would love to hear other people’s thoughts how kid-friendly the sectors are that they have climbed at.
Buthiers Canard
The Jingo Wobbly guidebook Fontainebleau Magique describes Buthiers Canard (AKA Massif Canard) as “virtually a drive-in bouldering area” and it’s an accurate description. You can literally park your car next to the boulders. It also has two cafes next it.
Massif Canard at Buthiers.
This convenience is the only real plus if you are visiting with a toddler. I just don’t think I would feel comfortable letting Leo run around here. The boulders are often large and are in a closely packed maze among trees and bushes on the slope of a hill. This means more options for a toddler to take a fall or to get lost. It also means fewer options for gentle, low level, toddler scrambling. I also don’t remember seeing anywhere you could make a sandcastle (unless it was out of bits of bark).
Buthiers Piscine
It may just be down the road from Buthiers Canard, but Buthiers Piscine (AKA Massif de I’l) feels a world away in terms of being child-friendly. The only thing it really shares with Buthiers Canard is a short walk in – about 2 to 5 minutes.
The oddest thing about Buthiers Piscine is that it is right next to a large holiday park. The area with the orange and blue circuits even overlooks the swimming pool. This might be a big bonus if you some of your children are older and want to do something other than bouldering.
The orange and blue circuits have a lovely little oasis of sand surrounded by boulders and with a few trees for shade. It’s not immediately obvious how you get to this without scrambling, but there is a way past the boulders if you follow the line of the fence that runs to the left of the swimming pool entrance. The boulders are tightly packed away from this little oasis; with the terrain becoming notably rougher the further you get from the path.
Leo enjoying a snack on the picnic mat at Buthiers Piscine.
The most immediately accessible area for a toddler is the yellow circuit. It’s sandy, starts right off the path and has a variety of smaller boulders. However, the yellow circuit becomes gradually harder and the terrain a bit rockier and steeper as the yellow circuit heads off into the woods.
There’s also a red and a black circuit that runs by the road, but I didn’t try this area out and so I’m afraid that I can’t give any thoughts on what it’s like.
The red, black, orange and blue circuits essentially wrap around two sides of a small hill. On a plateau on the top of that hill is a children’s circuit made up of small boulders in a tight pack. It looks brilliant and I’m hoping to take Leo there at some point.
Canche aux Merciers
It’s an accessible venue, with the walk-in only being about 5 minutes and along well-maintained tracks. The boulders are spread among the trees and the sector is flat. There are two large sandy clearings on either side of the sector that would be good for playing in. One is near a children’s circuit graded E (for ages 8-12) and the other is near a children’s circuit graded E- (for 5-9 year olds). There are also plenty of boulders to just clamber about on. This feels like a good place for a kid to play in the woods (there were quite a few dens there when we visited).
Canche aux Merciers.
The downsides are that it’s busy and that there aren’t any really sandy areas among the boulders. If you want to build a sandcastle, then you have to move a bit away from the action.
Cul de Chien
One of the main impressions I have from my short visit to Cul de Chien was of lots and lots of sand. If you’re toddler likes the beach, then this is the sector to go for.
The walk-in is about 15 minutes and most of this is on good tracks. It’s only in the last bit that it becomes sandy, but that’s enough to mean that this is probably somewhere not to take a buggy.
Me climbing yellow problem number 5 at Le Cul de Chien.
Mont Aigu
Even more than Canche aux Merciers, this is a sector that lives in the woods and is a great place to make dens and have sword fights with sticks. It’s also probably a good place to come if you want shade on a hot sunny day. Unfortunately, this means that it is rubbish for sandcastle building.
Mont Aigu is close to Fontainebleau. While this might make it more convenient in some ways, the bouldering itself is unfortunately not close to the car park. The walk-in is probably about 15 minutes, but is along flat tracks.
The climbing starts right next to the track and this area around the start of the circuits is probably the most toddler-friendly. The circuits then move gradually more up-hill and into the woods.
Rocher des Potets
This is one of my favourite sectors at Fontainebleau and a good one for kids. It’s a bit of a Goldilocks area. It’s not too busy, but there are still other families about. It’s a good mix of sandy clearings and woods. There are harder circuits and there are easier circuits. It’s a fairly compact area, but it manages to not be too small. The boulders come in a variety of shapes and sizes that give plenty of opportunities for scrambling, running about and playing hide and seek.
Valerie climbing problem number 1 at Rocher des Potets.
Rocher des Potets is about a 10-15 minutes walk from the car park and can be a little bit challenging to find the first time (and, for me, the second time too, because I took a wrong turn).
Rocher aux Sabots
This very busy area is about a 5 minute walk from one of the main car parks in Les Trois Pignons. The first thing you get to at you approach Rocher aux Sabots is the children’s circuit (graded E). There is a brilliant cave and tunnel by the first problem on this circuit that kept Leo entertained for ages and is well worth seeking out.
Roche aux Sabots in the Trois Pignons area of the forest.
Rocher aux Sabots is a mix of relatively flat areas and up-and-down and rocky areas. The large numbers of boulderers make it fairly easy for a toddler to wander under someone climbing. If you are looking for a place to set up camp, then head just up hill of the Jet Set area as this has a nice area of sand slightly away from the actual climbing.
Napping
All that climbing, running about and digging in the sand is pretty tiring. Organising naps was a fairly big part of our first trip to Fontainebleau when Leo was a baby and on our second trip, when he was about he was 21 months old. Working out how to take a toddler to a bouldering venue for most of the day and find an opportunity for him to have his afternoon nap is challenging. Valerie curling up with Leo on the picnic blanket so that he can have his nap worked on the one day we that did it, but I think that was only successful because there weren’t many people about. A better alternative was to put Leo in the ErgoBaby and walk gently around with him until he fell asleep. This meant that someone had to wear Leo until he awoke from his nap, but we approached this like a long turn of taking care of Leo and followed it up with a long turn climbing.
Leo napping in his ErgoBaby at Rocher des Potets.
I have seen other parents bring small tents so that their children can use them for a nap and others put them down for a rest in a buggy.
By the third trip we no longer had to think about all this because we had dropped the afternoon nap from Leo’s routine. However, we went from having to plan naptime to keeping a close eye on Leo so that we could call it quits for the day and head back to the hotel once it looked likely that he was getting too tired.
Going to the toilet
I’ve never seen any toilets in the car parks and forests of Fontainebleau. An unpleasant consequence of this lack of plumbing is that you often don’t have to go far from where people are climbing to find the tell-tale bits of white tissue that denote an impromptu toilet. Valerie and I have tried to not contribute to this by being as responsible as we can with Leo’s pee and poo.
It was straightforward to do this when he was using nappies. Using the picnic blanket or bouldering mat as a changing station meant that we avoided sand getting in places it shouldn’t and kept Leo comfortable. We put waste nappies in plastic bags and carried them until we reached the nearest bin or got back to the hotel.
Leo stopped using nappies a while ago and on our last trip we took an OXO Tot 2-in-1 Go Potty. This is essentially a collapsible potty that catches pee and poo in disposable plastic bags with absorbent pads in the bottom. Once the business is done, you simply remove the bag from the potty and tie it up. The bags can then be carried out until you get to a bin. It’s a brilliant product (there are other, similar ones out there) and has worked well on lots of days out.
The OXO Tot 2-1-1 Go Potty.
Staying
The choice is essentially between a campsite, a self-catering holiday cottage or a hotel. So far, we’ve gone for a hotel as its much less effort. Unfortunately, you lose the flexibility of being able to prepare your own meals (which can be a necessity with a fussy toddler) at a hotel. However, it is nice not having to sort out breakfast and to have the choice of eating dinner in a restaurant where you are staying. If you do go for a hotel, I’d recommend looking for one that has fridges in the rooms as a fridge makes storing snacks and the components of packed lunches so much easier.
The Hotel de l’Ecu de France is a good, friendly, quiet, traditional, family-run hotel in Malesherbes. There is a choice of a bistro or a more formal restaurant for evening meals or you can grab a pizza from one of the takeaways in the town. It’s worth knowing that the Hotel de l’Ecu de France has a couple of dogs, fish and a parrot. Leo was fascinated by them, but also got scared if the dogs got too close.
One of the things I liked about the Novotel Ury was that it felt more like staying in the forest. It sits in its own grounds on the edge of the woods and feels a bit more away from it all. As a chain hotel, it has a good range of amenities including a restaurant, bar, swimming pool, table tennis table, pool table and pinball. The rooms are quiet and well equipped. The only real disadvantage is that there are no restaurants in walking distance and so we defaulted to eating in the hotel restaurant most nights.
Conclusion
We’ve now been 3 times as a family to Fontainebleau and I’m already looking forward to a fourth trip next year. The bouldering could keep me and Valerie interested for decades and I’m sure Leo would love to keep going back for years to come. I’ve learned more about bouldering and parenting from going there. There’s always more to learn, so I’d love to hear from anyone with tips and suggestions for taking toddlers to Font.
Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm aims to help sooth the pain and tenderness you can get from climbing hard. It’s made with natural ingredients and has a kick of menthol. I’ve been trying it out to see if it keeps my hands in good shape.
Giddy Joint and Tendon Balm at Fontainebleau.
The idea is that applying Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm relieves pain, stiffness or tenderness in muscles, joints and tendons affected by overuse and/or injury. A combination of natural (and nearly all organic) ingredients is meant to sink into the skin to help sooth and heal. These ingredients are:
Safflower oil;
Shea butter;
Carnauba wax;
Menthol;
Camphor oil;
Argan oil;
Glucosamine peppermint oil;
Eucalyptus oil;
MSM;
Rosemary oil extract; and
Vitamin E.
I really like that the ingredients of a Giddy balm are all natural and not just a bunch of strange sounding chemicals. I also like that Giddy explain on their website what all of these ingredients are and what they’re meant to do. It’s great that they want to help their customers understand the products they are using on their bodies.
I would be repeating a lot of this information on the Giddy website if I described all of the ingredients in the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm, but there a few ingredients it’s worth me saying something about.
The first item on the list of ingredients, and so the most used in the balm, is safflower oil. This is made from the seeds of safflowers and is used in cooking and cosmetics. Safflower oil has a high concentration of linoleic acids and these are meant to have a range of health benefits. Giddy say that they use safflower oil “it sinks in fast, is highly unlikely to clog pores, and still works as an incredible moisturizing agent.”
The next item on the list is Shea butter. This is a fat made from a nut. It moisturises and softens the skin. Shea butter contains Vitamins A, E and F, which are good for skin health.
The carnauba wax in the balm comes from the leaves of a palm native to Brazil. It’s used in cosmetics because it’s hypoallergenic (i.e. causes fewer allergic reactions) and a moisturiser. It’s also insoluble in water and melts at a high temperature. This higher melting point is why carnauba wax is used to coat sweets to ensure that they don’t melt in your hand. Giddy says that this makes their balms less greasy than other balms that are mostly based on beeswax.
Giddy’s Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm.
These ingredients all help the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm be good for your skin, but the ingredient you are most likely to notice when you first apply this balm is menthol. It’s this ingredient that means the smell of this balm has a kick and which causes a tingling, cooling sensation when it’s applied. Giddy explains:
“In the same way that hot peppers trigger your body’s heat receptors without actually inducing a chemical heat change, menthol tricks your body’s cold receptors. This reaction in turn activates a cooling sensation which helps to promote numbing of minor aches and pains.”
This cooling sensation works as a counter-irritant – providing pain relief by using a different sensation to distract you from the pain you are experiencing.
A quick Google search reveals a few other reputed effects of menthol. Menthol apparently has some local anesthetic properties. It’s said to create vasodilation, so drawing more blood into the area where it is applied. This is said to promote healing of increasing the amount of oxygen reaching the site of the problem. However, I’m afraid that I don’t have any medical training and so can’t really judge the accuracy of whether menthol does or does not do these things. I am a bit skeptical though about the idea that it can help in muscle healing as I suspect that there will be a limit to how far into muscles something applied to the skin can sink.
What it’s like to use
Last year Giddy sent me the beta version of this balm to try out. Earlier this year they sent me the final version to put through a more long-term test. Since then I’ve been using it on my hands after climbing sessions at my local wall as well as after bouldering in the Peak District and at Fontainebleau.
I’ve perhaps been a bit limited in my ability to give this balm an extensive assessment by the fact that I have managed to not really injury myself recently. It’s a little tricky to tell how well something sooths pain if you aren’t really hurting. The best (or worst) I have been able to do is to try Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm out on a few muscle twinges and mild aches I got on my recent trip to Fontainebleau.
Giddy’s Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm.
During my testing I followed a tip I was given by Ben at Giddy to apply the Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm to my fingers after a good climb and then massage my fingers with an acupressure ring (AKA finger massage ring). Giddy say that:
“The GIDDY finger massage ring is the perfect tool to relieve pressure in your tendons and restore blood circulation in your fingers.”
Acupressure rings are essentially a stainless steel wire bent into a circle of triangular shapes. You use an acupressure ring by rolling it up and down each of your fingers. The pressure provided by the ring and the action of the bends in the wire rolling along acts to massage your finger. It’s a deeply weird sensation at first and still a bit weird even when you are more used to it. However, it’s also slightly pleasant and after I’ve finished using an acupressure ring my fingers do have that invigorated feeling you get after a massage.
Acupressure rings.
Acupressure rings are used in Chinese medicine. I’ve also seen references to climbers using them before climbing to warm up and after climbing to provide relief (there is a glowing review of acupressure rings by a rock climber on the To Defy Gravity blog).
The idea of using both the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm as well as an acupressure ring is that you get the benefits of both and the balm acts as a lubricant. (Sorry – there’s no way to say this without it sounds a bit rude and suggestive, but then lubricating your fingers before rubbing something up and down them is a bit suggestive.) I certainly felt that using both the acupressure ring and the balm was doing more than using the balm alone.
Using an acupressure ring with Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm.
As best I can tell during my un-injured testing, the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm did a fairly good job of relieving pain and tenderness. My hands have felt noticeably better after hard climbing sessions since I started using this balm and the acupressure ring. For example, I sometimes get cramps in my hands after an outdoor climbing session and I haven’t suffered from this recently. However, I have no way of knowing if there is a causal link here or if it’s just an association.
This balm is also straightforward to use. It readily melts on your hands and so is easy and quick to apply. The beta version I tried last year had fairly poor absorption, leaving a slightly waxy layer on your skin. This issue has been addressed with this final version (possibly because it doesn’t contain beeswax like the beta version). Although it leaves a bit of a shine, any oiliness goes relatively quickly. It leaves your hands feeling nicely moisturised and does so for some time.
There is an immediate cooling sensation from the menthol and this lasts for a surprisingly long time. As this balm lingers on the skin for a while, I’d advise scratching, rubbing or otherwise touching anywhere sensitive for a while after application.
It has a strong smell with a sharp kick of menthol and some things I can’t quite identify. The menthol is so strong that it creates a tingling sensation in my eyes and nose when I open the tin and apply it.
Conclusion
I’ve used the same scoring system here as I’ve used in my previous reviews so that the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm can be compared against other balms (although, as this is a muscle balm, there is a limit to how much of a comparison can be made with some balms). This system uses several different measures of the effectiveness of each balm and gives each a score out of ten (with 1 being poor and 10 being fantastic) against each measure.
Application – how easy the product is to apply to the hands.
Absorbency – how quickly the product absorbs into the skin and/or stops leaving your hands feeling oily or greasy.
Longevity – how long the product keeps your hands feeling nice and moisturised.
Smell – this is my estimation of how pleasant, or not, the product smells. It’s a pretty subjective measure, but it’s important, as your hands may smell of a balm for a while after it’s put on.
On this basis, I give the Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm –
The Giddy Joint, Tendon and Muscle Balm does a fairly good job of relieving pain and tenderness after a hard climbing session. Combining the use of the balm with the use of an acupressure ring also invigorates tired fingers. It’s easy to apply and absorbs well to leave your hands feeling moisturised and good.
Declaration: Giddy gave me free samples of theJoint, Tendon and Muscle Balm, acupressure rings and other products specifically for this review. This hasn’t influenced my opinion.
The Stonghold Climbing Centre has a cool name and describes itself as London’s largest indoor bouldering space. But is it any good?
Me climbing at the Stronghold Climbing Centre.
London’s newest climbing wall is hidden away down a quiet street a few minutes walk from Tottenham Hale station. The Stronghold Climbing Centre is housed in an old warehouse that had previously been home to a charity recycling and reusing domestic furniture and appliances. These workshops have been replaced with a big, open and light climbing space and a range of good facilities.
The climbing
The Stronghold says that it’s London’s largest indoor bouldering space and that’s easy to believe when you walk from the reception through to the climbing area. The first thing that strikes you is a huge arch and climbing walls with a beautiful variety of shapes that stretch out in-front of you before disappearing around a corner. It’s stunning. There is so much bouldering here that I genuinely had trouble working out what to do first (and second and third).
Me climbing at the Stronghold Climbing Centre.
The climbing area is in a large u-shape. Two-thirds of this is made up of painted walls with holds and two freestanding boulders. These are set with circuits colour-coded by level of difficulty according to the Hueco (or V) grading system. The remaining third has a traversing wall, a large training area with campus and fingerboards and what The Stronghold describes as London’s largest circuit board.
The Stronghold Climbing Centre’s training area.
The problems at The Stronghold are interesting and great fun. There’s variety in both the lines of the problems and the shapes of the wall that they go up. There’s just the right amount of physical and mental challenge in solving the problems. Plus, The Stronghold has a good mix of challenging, pumpy problems on which to push yourself and gentle problems to warm-up on. I also really like that the Stronghold promises on its website that two areas will be reset every week – meaning that there should always be new problems to climb every time I go.
The Stronghold Climbing Centre.
The Stronghold somehow manages to be probably the most aesthetically attractive climbing wall I’ve been to. I think it’s the extensive use of greys and white, with patches of green and black, and the little blobs of colour from the holds. It also helps that the skylights provide a lot of natural light. It’s a clean and bright look (it also helps that it’s actually clean; because it’s new).
The Stronghold Climbing Centre.
My one criticism is that the climbing area is a bit too hot. The roof looks like it’s insulated and this will probably be great in winter. However, I’ve been there on warm summer days so far and got pretty sweaty when climbing in shorts and a T-shirt. There’s a large ventilation system in the roof to help with background ventilation and the doors are left open, but this doesn’t do quite enough to prevent heat building up. It would be more comfortable (and require me to use less chalk) if the air could be moved around a bit more. The nice, friendly guy I’ve been talking to at reception has told me that they are looking into this and might get some fans.
Child-friendly climbing
As a parent, I really like that The Stronghold has a dedicated bouldering area for children. This area sits out of the way on a mezzanine overlooking the climbing area. There are several small climbing walls with problems designed for children (they even have fun holds in the shape of animals, faces and even aliens). This area has rubber matting and a long bench for parents to have a rest on.
The children’s area at the Stronghold.
The kids area gives my 3-year-old son a place where he can run around and play without being in the way of other climbers (and in danger of being landed on). Plus, it gives him and other kids a place to meet and play together. This is more relaxing for my wife and I, and definitely more fun for him.
The children’s area at the Stronghold.
I’ve also seen plenty of children using the main climbing area, with the smaller of the two boulders being particularly popular and fun.
Climbing on the smaller boulder at The Stronghold Climbing Centre.
The Stronghold is also conveniently next door to Down Lane Park, so we can take my son to the playground if he needs more space to run around or wants to go up a climbing frame rather than a climbing wall.
The facilities
I like the philospophy of The Stronghold –
“At Stronghold, we want to enhance the climbing community that we are part of, and the local community too. We believe climbing centres are more than just places to hone climbing skills – which is why you’ll find numerous areas to hang out and socialise.
We want to promote climbing as part of a healthy lifestyle. This is why you’ll also find a climbing-centric gym, a yoga studio, fully equipped changing and shower facilities, event spaces and a well-stocked café.”
The Stronghold.
The single, mixed gender locker room is nice. It comes with a few, small, individual shower rooms and individual changing rooms, as well as separate male and female toilets. This set-up has worked fine when I’ve been there, but I wonder whether there will be enough changing rooms when it’s very busy and there are likely to be more people who want to use them.
The Stronghold’s changing room.
The climbing-centric gym is in its own room and serves as a warm-up area. It’s an ok space, but for some people there might be an issue with the kids climbing area being directly above it. When there are children running around in the mezzanine (alright, my child when I’ve been there), the stomping noise travels easily through to the gym below. Discussing this with my acoustic engineer wife; there’s not much that can be done easily or cheaply about such impact noise and this is perhaps why it is as it is.
The Stronghold’s gym.
Next to reception is a small café that sells tea, coffee, pastries, cakes and locally brewed beer. There’s also a small shop with climbing essentials like chalk, chalk bags, tape, protein bars and a limited selection of clothes and shoes. Shoes and chalk can be rented from here.
The Stronghold’s cafe, reception and shop.
In addition, The Stronghold offers corporate events, climbing lessons, yoga lessons and (soon) exercise classes.
Conclusion
The Stronghold Climbing Centre is a brilliant bouldering venue. It has great climbing, in an attractive, bright space and an excellent kids bouldering area.
The details
Stronghold Climbing Centre
18 Ashley Road
London
N17 9LJ
020 8350 2453
The Stronghold is a few minutes walk from Tottenham Hale Station (on the Victoria Line and National Rail). There’s also a bus station at Tottenham Hale Station and so it’s readily accessible by bus. There is a limited amount of parking.
