UKC

Are there any really good walls which resemble 'real rock' as opposed to the walls which are all 'bolt ons'. In particular any with cracks? 

A bit like the old Rock Antics wall at Newton Aycliffe if you know what I mean.

I know what you mean. Sadly most of them are a dying breed, most of the Bendcrete walls have gone but there's still one in the Glossop Leisure Centre and I think part of Preston's Westway wall is Bendcrete.

Thx for replying.😊 I thought the bolt on walls were great at first but now I want to try Bendcrete again. The walls Ive been to have no cracks. 

Some walls create areas which are very realistic made out of resin panels.  Personally I love these as they are very much like climbing outdoors but from the walls point of view they are very limiting.  Once they are in place that's it, there is not much scope to change what was created originally.  This means that once they are polished they are more difficult to change and the features of the resin are what you get from day one.  It is of course possible to add and remove supplemental holds but even as a user once you climbed the, usually limited number of routes that's it.  They are however very close to climbing the real thing.

Al

Yes I see what you mean. We need to invent a way of reproducing reality which allows routes to be altered andpolished bits to be replaced easily. Maybe the next generation of walls will be like this.

The Sheffield Depot has a good Wide Boyz crack area, with as much hand jamming as any hoary old veteran could wish for. It's not a bad bouldering wall all round, but I prefer the techy setting at the Works, and for a proper beasting there is of course no substitute for the Wave. Walls that attempt to replicate rock are generally crap imho, apart from the sadly deceased Broughton and old Ambleside walls, the demise of which make me go misty eyed in reminiscence.

The foundry still has two real rock walls, it's possible to climb without the bolted holds and make great quality routes.

I remember the Ambleside wall. I used to go all the time. So its not there now😢

I need to travel south to these walls your mentioning. Ive heard of them of course but never been.

Awesome Walls Sheffield has the prow. A featured wall which can also have bolt on holds. Main features, a HVS layback, a nice featured corner, a VS ish line of tufas through a series of small roofs, a VS jam crack and an, awkward for the short, HVS corner route. All are about 16m. The jam crack is still a bit aggressive so tape may be useful.  Grades are my estimates. Enjoy!

Cheers for that 😊

wasn't that just some bricks sticking out on the outside if one of the Charlotte Mason buildings?

No it was near Charlotte Mason but in its own small building. This was about 1986 so I forget all the details. It seemed to be a room that you could climb around in. Not very high. More like Bendcrete than the bolt on style. You could climb all over the ceiling too as it was full of pockety holds. It definitely had an atmosphere. It reminded me of the Old Dungeon Ghyll bar for some reason.☺

Lincoln wall has a small but fairly difficult prow that can be climbed using the features only.

I'm not sure why you would get two dislikes for simply asking a question about walls, there are some w@#£&*s on here!

Big Rock (Kingston, MK) has a "fake rock" wall including cracks, right at the back.  Their other wall (Bond, Bletchley) doesn't.

I will try not to let the dislikes get me down 😊 Thanks for your reply.

Thanks for that. ☺

I was chatting to one of the setters at my local wall about this recently. They reset every 6 weeks ish and something I'd been working on was about to go. No biggie, but in the olden days I used to have projects that took months and months - I quite like that sort of long term tussle

Trackside at Mile End is highly sculpted.

You sound like someone who doesnt need instant gratification. Unlike most people today. 😊

I will look that up thx ☺

I used to go there around 93, was quite a  to good small wall for the era. Used to see  a young Dave birkett making everything look easy.

Glasgow Climbing Centre has. The lead walls are all sculpted with added plastic holds. I love it as it doesn't hand the sequence/moves to you on a plate and allows different solutions depending on your reach, flexibility and strengths.

Basically a freestanding squash court type building round the back of the college - it wasn't bendcrete though, mostly bare breezeblock with natural holds cemented in at random. The higher end wall was a gently overhanging slab of concrete like a circuit board at a modern wall (on the outside it formed an actual slab) the other end had the cave with the horizontal overhead roof section that you're remembering.

The new Ambleside wall actually does have bendcrete style panels (with bolt on holds), Redpoint in Bristol also has an end wall of sculpted panels including a hand jam crack that goes entirely on features.

Glasgow Climbing Centre has a anclove with a couple of pretty realistic crack climbs which can be climbed at around 6a without use of bolt-on holds.

Honestly, people do not, generally, want realistic climbing indoors.

Bold statement, but allow me to justify it!

real climbing is about sharp edges and crimps that dig into your skin and trash it, it's about jugs with spikes that impale your finger in exactly the wrong way, it's about pockets full of needle-sharp crystals, It's about dimples that are exactly the wrong shape to get your fingers into correctly, it's about friction that is so good you can stand on almost nothing (sometimes), cracks that shred your skin and bruise your bones with their horrendous jams.

I've been to walls quite a bit in my time (though, admittedly, less so recently) and in my experience people really avoid all of the above (or the holds simply are not made because nobody would buy them), it's relatively rare to see people climbing crack features. In terms of the bendcrete/panels covered with molded stuff, I've seen people use them for feet a lot, and that is arguably quite cool and a good way to get used to using awkward and crap footholds, but I've very rarely seen people use them for hands.

Think about how often you have heard people indoors complain that a move/hold is awkward or tweaky or reachy or bunched up or whatever... 

When climbing indoors, people don't want to get all bruised up and bloody and broken.

(also, I've heard that walls don't like it when people bleed on the holds anways )

But crack machines are good fun

I've bled on the walls at both Big Rocks.  Some of the evidence was only destroyed when they repainted Kingston

RopeRace in Marple, foundry, Brunel uni wall, small wall at Staveley (Chestrfield) has a few panels

The Ice Factor in Lochaber has a nice feature wall on the overhang face on the big room and the left wall of the training bay. Climbing without any holds can be a fun challenge and the climbs in the training bay range from 6a+ through the most being about 6c and some at 7a+. I've not tried the big bay climbs on features only

One of the nice things is that they have no grades so you just challenge yourself and make up eliminates or say 'only one hold'. The lack of feet is big bonus

Eldon Square in Newcastle is a superb example.

Rope Race in Marple has got a fantastic set of feature only lead walls.

the one i'm thinking of was a little way up Sweden bridge lane - the road the is the start for the Fairfield horseshoe

though memory fades with time....

Don't forget Wirksworth. Quite a large area of featured panels, including a mean finger crack!

I have just checked out some photos of it. It looks worth a visit. ☺