Urban Adventures. The London Climbing Centres (LCC) 8 Centres challenge
- Louis Kennedy
- Feb 19
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 9
In November 2022: I was in London picking up my first stint of industrial rope access work. The idea was to bridge the autumnal off-season with work that actually pays reliably. I say this because for those with experience of the outdoor industry this can be something of a novelty...
I had recently completed my industrial rope access (IRATA) level 1 qualification, and the idea was to find work near my family home in Clapham in South West London. Hoping to reconnect with some family and old friends and also fund my outdoor career. In theory it was perfect, In practice however, being stuck in the city for the longest stretch since I left school at 18 was a tough pill to swallow; a massively first world problem...!
I really disliked my sixth form years living in the city. I felt caged by the urban environment. I failed to properly engage with the work I was set in the classroom and as with many of us, I found my sanctuary in Indoor climbing. I would spend approximately 16-20 hours a week at London climbing walls. Even occasionally skiving off school to sneak in a session. It was everything to me as a teenager and 10 years later it still provides me with the same feeling of accomplishment; just in a slightly different way.
Thus Autumn of 2022 demanded a new routine: adult life in the city. I found myself in familar territory. Namely climbing at VauxWall Climbing Centre (funnily enough in Vauxhall, central London...). Tucked under the railway arches beneath Vauxhall train station and just a short journey from my family home in Clapham. It was a tight nit and friendly hangout characterised by largely very steep boulders and modern route setting. I had been a member on one of the first iterations of their youth development programme: "the vauxsquad" and as a result have lots of great memories of the coaching, mentorship and fun we had as young climbers.
So revisiting the wall on a regular basis brought a few things into focus, particularly as I tried to recapture the nostalgia of the motivation I had for training as a teenager. The first realisation was, since its Olympic debut, climbing had exploded into the mainstream. It was trendy now and I was still very much not. It had seemingly veered off on a separate tangent to my own. I had spent the last 7-8 years deviating even further away from the indoor norm and becoming a Mountaineer. An avid connoisseur for static climbing with a niche enjoyment for being wet, cold, miserable and somehow still having fun. A.K.A Type 2 fun. Climbing had to me become less about the specific physical performance and instead the overall experience; the companionship, shared hardship and adventure involved in navigating dangerous beautiful enviroments from Scottish seacliffs and stacks to Scottish winter climbing, ski touring and alpinism.
The conception of the London Climbing Centres (LCC) 8 Centre Challenge!
I met up at Vauxwall West with an old school friend Xav Burgess. Fancying a change mid session neither of us had visited the neighbouring Vauxwall East. So we took it a queue to explore a new wall and inadvertently in the process discovered that a single day pass gave access to all eight climbing centres under the LCC brand. Including the freshly opened 8th LCC wall: Euston Wall in North London.
Our adventure to Vaux East yielded peak hours of business and we quickly retired to our regularly scheduled post climb pub outing. Somewhere into the haze of alcohol fuelled conversation, we had a eureka moment: why not try and visit every centre in one day?
The rules we constructed were simple:
Visit every wall
Climb something at each one
Cycle between all eight
It was simple and stupid. It's amazing what boredem can yield. A quick and very unscientific Google search told us it would take around 12–13 hours and about 100km of cycling (pictured on the receipt above). We immediately decided it would be even better on a tandem bike, but we couldn’t find one to borrow and weren’t quite ready to part with a £100 to rent one, so regular bikes it was. Thus, fuelled by our boredom and exercising a perhaps questionable use of free will, our very own urban odyssey began to take shape.
On the 26th November, we met on Clapham Common at 0600 sharp ready to breathe in approximately 100km of polluted air. The uncertainty of our journey quickly began to unravel. On the first leg of our journey our shoddy plans had yielded the wrong opening times and CroyWall was closed for another hour...! Our early alpine start was in tatters and we cycled to the local Tesco to mourne our mistake over a meal deal breakfast. We returned only to discover the wall had been booked out for a private university bouldering competition: the only private event of the year. After politely explaining what we were attempting to do the staff, they very kindly allowed us in for a quick 10 minute climb and thankfully the rest of the day continued slightly more smoothly.
We got lost once or twice, navigating off our phones. Xav cycled through countless amber and red lights... I would then loose Xav because I was too wimpy to follow him through the onslaught of oncoming traffic. The journey allowed for a very diverse and memorable tour of the city sites from Tower Bridge and the Shard to some of the more bleak and nameless busy carriageways leading out of the city. Arguably our greatest mistake was our exemplary nutrition plan. Hungry and tired after climbing at Euston Wall, we stopped off at the McDonald's in St Pancras and scoffed a large big mac and 20 chicken mcnuggets each... This did no favours for the gut on the very long slog out to Harrow Wall. I would say my overarching memory from the experience though, was that London roads are rubbish and I am convinced that I have a map of the potholes and speed bumps of the city firmly imprinted on my bum. This was made all the worse because I had worn cotton boxer shorts and to say things were a bit raw after 100km of cycling is an understatement... (If I did it again I would defitintly wear padded cycle shorts!)
To round up the London Climbing Centres (LCC) 8 Climbing Centres Challenge. I think it's fair to say that it is an unconventional means of spending a rainy weekend in London, but it satisfies the main criteria that constitute a decent adventure. An element of risk (especially when following Xav on a bike...!), an uncertain outcome and a degree of hardship. At nearly 11 hours it is rather a big tour of the city and something of a marathon. That is to say I would be hard pressed to convince myself to do it again and the whole experience felt like something of an extreme commute or an exercise in negotiating traffic. On the flip side however, you do get to see some interesting buildings and sites along the way, climb some cool boulder problems and I would 10/10 prescribe if you are bored.
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