We recently were invited to try out the new Rock-Up wall climbing venue in Watford. Here are our thoughts on Rock-Up, how much fun was it for the boys, and do they want to go back?
Rock Up is a wall climbing activity centre with 27 different climbing walls to try out. There is also small soft play for the little ones and a café for treats for the adults. Unless you are taking part in the climbing as well. Hands up… I was too scared to try out the climbing.
The Watford Rock-Up can be found right in the middle of the main Intu shopping centre! I was surprised to see this, but I guess it will be amazing for passing traffic. It is very near to John Lewis.
Safety First
Firstly safety, we got there early for our safety briefing. Give yourself a good amount of time for this as the harnesses take a while to get on. There was a group of maybe 15 children and it took 20 to 30 minutes to get everyone safely harnessed up and given a safety lesson. Each climbing wall has its own clip in safety system and there are lots of staff on the climbing floor to clip you in and clip you out of the harness. We were given a full brief of the do and donts.
The boys were to wait to be clipped in and out and to keep clear from the bottom of the climbing walls when someone was up it. They were to climb up, hit the button at the top of the wall and then abseil down. Easy!
My boys are 10, 8 and 5. It was a perfect activity for the older boys, but my 5-year-old didn’t want to climb. He was more than happy to stay in the soft play area.
The Climbing Walls
There were many stand out climbing wall, each had a different aspect or difficulty. We loved the ‘ice wall’, a wall that you climb up using pegs to act like ice picks. There was a very cool and pretty rainbow steps wall, more in terms of prettiness to me!
One of the boy’s favourite was the timer’s walls where you can time yourself getting from bottom to top, they tried again and again to beat their times and to beat each other! They managed to climb in around 15 seconds. We watched another expert climber literally run up the wall and do it in 5 seconds!
The transparent wall was great where you can climb either side and race each other up the wall. The boys really loved this one and Josh the younger was super-fast, beating his older brother.
The green pipes were a challenge where you had to step from one pipe to another getting higher and higher. It reminded me of Super Mario world! Dylan couldn’t face standing up on the last highest pipe and jumped down. Josh made it to the last pipe. He showed a real talent for climbing!
Leap of Faith
There was one final jump which involved climbing up a pole and taking a leap of faith to grab hold of a swinging pad mid-air. The boys both relished this challenge and took the leap of faith to reach their goal!!
Take a Look for Yourself
Here is video of Rock-Up so you can see exactly what I am describing.
The older boys really loved it and are super keen to return. It is a great way to spend an hour and tire them out. They were aching that night from an hour of running up and down walls! Rock Up costs £11.95 at peak times for the children and £8.95 for off peak times.
Disclosure – We were gifted tickets to Rock-Up.
