Before lockdown, The Climbing Clan met every Wednesday at Manchester Climbing Centre.
Whether you had experience climbing, or had someone to climb with or not, we took you under our wing. Quite a number of people have had their first climbing experience, and learnt to belay with us.
At 8pm, everyone gathers in the cafe, and food is shared out. Every week some people bring food to share with the Clan. Traditionally this is cake – homemade and bought, but these days the definition of cake has been stretched to include pineapple, hummus and all sorts of shareable goodies!
After Cake, people feeling tired head home, and people eager to make use of the extra energy head back up the wall.
One of our core values is welcoming climbers of every ability and ambition – so it doesn’t matter whether you are LGBT, are a caver, can climb 8a or are new to climbing – everyone is welcomed and encouraged! Pictured above is Tim’s 99 year old grandma trying her hand at rock climbing for the very first time, back in Jan 2019 at MCC!
Of course, this isn’t what our meetups during lockdown look like. If you’re interested in hearing about those – join “The Climbing Clan” Facebook group.
@tdobsonnet for founding the Climbing Clan, for the words and pics above, and finally a shout out to Climbing Clan regular, @rretro87 for creating some mega artwork based on their visits to MCC! For more on what the ‘Clan’ get up to, plus more incredible artwork check out #climbingclan.