The Castle Climbing Centre

Next SunBloc Saturday 27th June, 12-4pm. Expect some wicked tunes along with our Castle-made ice cream, Send-Zings, Bee Kind brushes and a chance to win your next bag of chalk from Rock Technologies! We’ll see you there🧴🌞

New course on offer!

Bouldering Fundamentals 2 is designed for those climbing in and around circuits 4-5, perfect for helping you develop more advanced techniques and applying them to competition-style and dynamic boulders.
Ben, one of the course coaches, talks us through some of the elements that make up the course and what you can expect to achieve by the end of it.

For more details and to book, check out the courses page of our website.

Only three tickets left on the beginners dynamic movement workshop!
Catch Louis Parkinson at The Castle for an afternoon of workshops. Focusing on dynamic movement, tactics and projecting, Louis’ coaching will put a pep in your step and have you lasche-ing up the walls in no time. Small groups and specially set problems, check out the schedule below:

30/06
1.00-2.10pm Beginners Dynamic Movement
2.20-3.30pm Intermediate Dynamic Movement
3.50-4.00pm Projecting, Tactics and Mindset

Book now through our app or find the link in our bio.

Thank you to all who came out on Saturday, we had a blast! Hope you enjoyed the homemade ice-cream and the honey-melon Send-zings. Next one is June 27th (weather dependant). See you then🧴☀️

Have you caught our YouTube video yet? Check the link in our bio to watch, and read all about the history below:

The wave was built by Colin Rockley in 1995 and was v2 of one he had built in Cliff’s Barn in Lancashire. He was just trying to establish Rockley Climbing Walls as a new business and he was keen to produce a showpiece for The Castle when it first opened as the first modern roped climbing centre in London.
Steep cellar walls were common in the northern climbing heartlands but this was the first thing like it in the SE of England and Colin wanted to make a statement with the impressive curves. Normal plywood can’t be bent to these shapes, so it was built on a steel frame with stub arms and four sheets of thin ply bent over it and glued together to form the distinctive wave.
It’s first incarnation was in the Engine House where the top rope slabs are now. It was bare wood and all the holds were also wood. Most were made by Garry Wickam, a local climber and sculptor, out of a variety of hard woods. Most were smooth organic shapes and some were even French polished!

The effect was something that looked like it belonged in the Tate Modern not a climbing centre!
Initially people made up their own problems, but the holds were named for reference. A bunch of keen board climbers had an afterhours naming party where the names got wilder as more beer was consumed. Problems were recorded in a book and denoted by a list of the hand a footholds used.
Only a few months after this we decided to build the top rope slabs so the Wave was dismantled and moved to the Boiler House. It was the only climbing in that part of the building at first. Initially it was located where the Fang arch is now but when the Stacks were built in 2000 the Wave moved round the corner to the location it’s in now.
The general feeling amongst users was that the Wave was too steep so, when it was installed in the Cave we reduced the angle by about 5 degrees. (Continued in comments)

Thank you to our featured setters