ROTK Testimonials - ROKT - Brighouse Indoor Climbing Wall

The whole squad of twelve boys had an absolutely fantastic time at your climbing gym, taking part in the abseiling, climbing and bouldering activities. To my knowledge, none of the boys have ever done any type of climbing like this before and your instructor team of Phil, Phil and Nick were absolutely brilliant with the boys. Bearing in mind that my team of boys are all aged eight or nine, the rapport between the boys and the instructors was absolutely spot on, and all the boys were all put at ease with all the activities by the friendly nature of all of the instructors! Even though at the beginning, there were some of the team who were initially very scared of the heights, every single one of them walked out of the building at the end of the session with huge smiles!

ROKT Climbing Gym is just down the road from us in Brighouse, West Yorkshire. We were lucky enough to be invited along by Euan Noble on of the Directors, to have a tour and a ‘bouldering’ session.

Now before you read on, this is going to be one of our longer reviews so if you just want to skim the pictures and cut to the chase - ROKT is excellent, you should go. The kids will love it, as will you, the facilities are great and growing all the time, the staff are amazingly friendly and it’s just great fun. The rest of this blog post is all about why it’s as good as it is.

We were due to meet Euan at ROKT at 11:30 and for once we managed to get everyone there on time. The venue is actually in Sugdens Flour Mill, which closed down some years back but will be a familiar site to the people of Brighouse but as soon as you walk in you know your in for an experience that’s just a little different, something with an edge to it, cool music is piped around the place, talented graffiti artists have contributed to the decorating and directly opposite the reception desk one of the many climbing walls has half a dozen or so people hanging off it, several in physics defying postures. Max, who had been looking forward to this trip spends several moments with his mouth hanging open.

After a short wait in the chill out room a bright smile appears through the stable like door, this is Euan, now this is the first time we’ve met Euan and it takes us all of 2 minutes of introductions before it’s pretty clear that a) we like him and b) he’s in love with the whole ROKT project. Throughout the tour, which we’ll get to in a moment, we couldn’t help but be sucked in by his sheer enthusiasm and vision. You start to understand why despite only being open to the public since April 2011 ROKT has already attracted over 7000 members, it’s quite possible Euan and Leigh have walked the streets of Brighouse and talked each and every one of them.

Euan gave us the full tour of the venue, showing us all the current facilities they have completed, new ones in development and even part’s of the mill they have not even started yet. Looking at the latter you start to get an idea of how much work has gone on in such a short period of time, the site used to be a damp, derelict and dangerous knackered old mill with nothing but old machinery, rotten flour and dead pigeons to offer. Hard to imagine, as he takes us through the labyrinth of rooms, stair wells and corridors.

The site now boasts several bouldering rooms with over 2.4km2 of bouldering walls for beginners through to experts including several suitable for kids, a 21 metre lead climbing wall and 4 grain silos some of which have now been transformed into 16.5 metre high top rope silo’s with the rest (11) in plan for conversion in the future. There are also rooms for other uses such as yoga and martial arts both of which are taught at the centre.

The vision does not stop there though as Euan explains to us with obvious excitement as he takes us round different rooms in various states of construction. They will soon be opening a unique ‘Penthouse Bouldering Room’ for experienced climbers featuring Leigh’s (the other Director) creation, based on what they call ‘ROKTAGONS’ - a series of large interlinking tessellating geodesic blocks, and what they believe will be the first of it’s kind in the UK, an indoor Free-Running academy, and if you’re not sure what that is do a quick search on Youtube or watch the start of Casino Royale or check www.3run.co.uk.

There is more to ROKT than just getting your adrenalin kicks though, there is a real sense of community spirit here and that extends into the wider community as well as they are working with various youth groups to work with young people who perhaps need an outlet other than a street corner while getting them hooked on personal achievement rather than a bottle of cheap cider.

They also have kids clubs every day and at weekends several times a day, we saw two or three clubs running on the Saturday we visited, each group had instructors with them who didn’t seem too phased by the whirlwind of noise that comes with groups of enthusiastic kids having enormous fun.

Anyway, after the tour, which felt like a little adventure in it’s own right, Euan left us in the hands of one of the instructors who gave us a pile of forms to fill in, a safety overview, some warm up tips and then pointed us at a wall and told us to go climb, well boulder.

Bouldering is basically low level, un-roped climbing and there are many walls spread amongst various rooms at ROKT, we stayed with the easy ones for obvious reasons but there are walls to test the most experienced.

We all had a go and we all loved it. Max has done things like this before and took to it like a duck to water, Liz was clearly better than me and even Zack managed to have a go and really enjoyed himself.

The biggest mention has to perhaps go to Amelia though who, at 4 years old, pretty much managed to traverse one of the walls unaided on her second try. She was like a mountain goat and her sense of achievement with the beaming smile it produced was infectious.

We will definitely be back to ROKT, Max is keen to try a rope climbing lesson and Amelia had such a good time and showed such a natural talent for it, it would almost be a crime not to take her again!

For more information check out their website, it is full of info and thankfully kept up to date. We’ve been invited back when they open the Free-running academy so I’m sure there will be another post about this magnificent community resource in the future.

CLOSE TESTIMONIAL

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