Rock Climbing & Gorge Walking Sessions in Yorkshire. July 24th 2013

A few days after working in Church Beck with the Shrimpton family, Iain was back in Yorkshire working with children attending the second Village Camps activity session at Brimham Rocks and Howstean Gorge in Nidderdale.

The day starts with a morning at Brimham "bouldering" around the sites many gritstone outcrops, Bouldering at Brimham involves climbing up, over, around & down the rocks using hands and feet without using climbing ropes & harnesses. This means that people in the group (photo one) have to working together helping each other up & down so, bouldering can be a good teamwork exercise.

After just over an hour of bouldering, Iain and his group moved to the climbing area at "cyclops" - still at Brimham Rocks and on the edge of the bouldering area. Cyclops is so called because of the hole in the rock (middle of photo two) likened to the Mythical Cyclops Eye.

Here, the group got harnesses on and were shown how to belay before starting to climb using a top rope/bottom belay system.

In a top rope/bottom belay system, the rope is anchored at the top of the crag and the climber is attached to one end and climbs up whilst belayers (several in this case) pull down on and keep the rope tight in case the climber slips. On reaching the top anchor, the climber is lowered by their belaying team back to the bottom of the climb. In photo two, the three girls nearest are working together using this system and we use a similar system on all of our Introductory Climbing Sessions in The Lake District.

The final photo in this post shows Iains team having some wet fun in Howstean Gorge in Nidderdale. After climbing & bouldering at Brimham Rocks, the whole group plus instructors relocates to Nidderdale for the afternoon session where camp is set up so that the group can stay overnight. The afternoons activities consist of abseiling some 70 feet off a bridge in to the bed of Howstean Gorge followed by some gorge walking and, as this is a limestone gorge, some caving as well.

Kendal Mountaineering Services offer all of these activities here in the Lake District where you can try out your own half day Rock Climbing & Abseiling Session as well as Ghyll Scrambling and Canyoning all starting at £45 per person for a half day(four hour) session. Of course, we offer discounts for groups over five persons and for family groups - so do ask about these. We also offer caving half days in the Yorkshire Dales National Park at the same price but with the same discounts applied. Give us a call or email us to enquire about our prices and to book your session. We look forward to working with you.