Karl and I headed over to the Leeds Wall on Sunday to play on the dry tooling wall/tower. It's been there a while but i've never been and K had his shiny axes to scratch up. We took big boots to make it feel more real and arrived midday ish at a pretty empty wall (but full car park – kids club I think).
There are bunch of routes mostly graded M3..M5, we could't tell much difference between them but were glad it's top rope only. Kitted out in helmets, goggles, boots, gloves and pointy axes we thrashed our way up and down, falling off liberally and generally have a right giggle. In our early struggles i felt there was little subtlety in our style, mostly being of the flail and wild pull type of move. We reckon the grading must be for wearing rock boots, but we didn't care much.
Tea and lunch (chips and bacon butty) later we finished up most of the easier routes (there are 2 desperate looking things) including a really good interesting blue M4 with lots of lateral movement and another go at the wooden beams (with slots for torquing – excellent wheeze). Karl decided to finish off by slicing his finger open, luckily the gloves protected him – so only a small flesh wound. Unluckily (for me) they were my gloves he was filling up with blood !
A good fun shoulder busting workout, and a great change from H/Gate or York.