Last Wednesday on the 21st of December me and my friend Abi attempted EVERY climb in The Climbing Works for The Children’s Hospital Charity and it  was exhausting! (To donate please click here)

At the start of the day we warmed up in The Mini Works but after some failed attempts at skipping in a busy environment we headed over to the big works for a more quiet start.

After warming up we moved to our first circuit, the greens, we warmed up on these and I chose to do odd numbers of climbs while Abi chose even numbers. We then  immediately moved on to the pinkles (pink and purple’s) and the steady stream of donations kept coming as more people came into The Climbing Works and also our sign attracted the attention of more people!

We then had some snacks and free hot chocolates (a big thanks to The Climbing Works) but also wasted our energy by messing about, taking photos, videos and trying each other’s climbs which doubled our work load.

 

We then tried the wasp circuit, as this is the circuit we often do in our free time, we wasted EVEN MORE energy by working each others climbs (we would later regret this!).  We did quite a few wasps but missed out on a lot due to the strict rule that we set ourselves – only one or two attempts on each climb (of course, we broke this rule almost straight after the wasp circuit!)

We didn’t need much rest after this because next we had the DREADED blue circuit. After eating our lunch, we started the blues with absolutely no hope of doing any in the small amount of attempts we had set to try them in. We were right  and we didn’t top a single climb but made some good progress on some of the more fun climbs that we both tried.

As the red circuit was due to be reset in the following days so it had been taken down, we had to compensate and chose to do the comp wall! A bit of an unfair swap I know but we were both still optimistic and full of energy so we tried every climb and even worked on a few for a while. Part way through our circuit on the comp wall we had a generous donation from some climbing friends and they also bought us a Freddo each!  We both did about half a dozen climbs and as few of them were really hard we were absolutely knackered at the end of it.

After a LONG rest and some hilarious hand taping we started the orange circuit with refreshed energy. We were both hoping to do a few of the oranges as they are often climbs that we would do after a few attempts. Unfortunately we only did one or two but once again wasted our energy by trying each others numerous times. Near the end of the circuit Abi told me of some pain in her toes from them being squeezed so tight for such a long time.

She decided the best option was to tape up her toes and the end result was pretty “interesting”!

Next we had to take on the murples (mint and purple) and I was pretty happy when I topped one out of the ENTIRE circuit! As you might have guessed we were pretty tired by this point so decided not to work on these climbs for a long time.

We had definitely had enough at this point but dealt with the pain well.

We now had the blacks which in some way was a relief as we can usually do most of them without too much of a struggle but on the other hand, they usually have big holds and would scrape our skin more so this was a negative for the our hands.  We did around half of the blacks which was alright considering the circumstances.

We then rested for almost an hour and I have to admit we both nearly fell asleep!

The yellow circuit was second to last and we were both nervous of it as the holds are often very sharp so our raw skin would suffer a lot.  In the end the holds weren’t too bad and since we had both vigorously taped our skin we could barely feel it.  We did almost all of the yellows and fell back onto the sofa for another well deserved rest.

Sunshine Pizza Oven kindly donated free pizza’s for me and Abi and they were the most delicious pizza’s I have ever tried!

Also thank you very much to all of The Climbing Works staff who made announcements and supported us through the entire day.

We were finally onto our last circuit after almost nine hours and we were so tired we could barely stand but we had to finish our challenge. We eventually finished climbing at 20:08  so far we had raised over £1,000 towards The Children’s Hospital Charity and to add to that total please click here!

Throughout the day we took many videos and photos and soon we will try our best to make a small movie from them which will be released to this blog soon!

We would like to thank everyone who has made a donation and everyone who helped us complete this challenge!

 

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