The Red Goat Climbing Wall — Local services in England

TLDR - fine for the odd climbing sesh or if using non climbing facilities, but not worth a membership till they sort out their rout setting quality and start taking feedback.

This comes from someone with 10 years experience climbing, has done boulder setting before, and has been to 20+ climbing gyms. I am prepared to be banned from the gym if they figure out who I am (like Snowden fleeing the USA), the managment needs to check their hubris.

The route setting is very uninspired and there are not enough problems for the levels most people climb at - add more intermediate problems to help climbers advance from beginner to advanced (set on a bell curve of difficulty, this is the distribution of climbers ability). They need to hire some experienced route setters and a climbing gym manager, because at the moment climbing seems to come second to running a restaurant/bar.

The routes are repetitive and frankly there are not enough problems to justify buying a membership. They route set once a week and only on a tiny patch of the wall, which only gives climbers maybe an hour of climbing at their level - they need to set with smaller holds so they can add more routes into the space. So definitely not worth a month's membership. Only get a membership if you will use the gym, hangboards, or circuits for endurance (even that is pretty lacking – you can do circuits in the shittiest of climbing walls, its not an indication of quality facilities).

The setters don’t really seem to be able to climb very hard, which is important for understanding how to set difficult problems. When they set they often can’t even complete the problems they set, so they just assume it must be hard. That is the equivalent to creating a maths exam for masters students but not having even finishing...

Overall came away with a slightly Meh feeling.

I really wanted to like it, and there's loads of good points, but the (core) climbing experience felt confused and underwhelming.

This is of course entirely subjective, and as a predominantly outdoor, trad climber, maybe I'm just not their target demographic.

Good:

The facilities are nice, well designed and in really good repair;

staff are nice even at peak times when obviously rushed off their feet,

food of excellent quality and definitely a positive.

Bad:

Booking system is clearly not working as a measure to limit numbers, but online prepayment ties you in to climbing at a time when the wall is unpleasantly crowded and you would normally walk away.

Everything is slathered in chalk, whilst some responsibility for that clearly lies with users over-chalking (given the holds themselves are in really good nick, and plenty friction-y with only a tinsy dab of chalk), they clearly need more frequently cleaning.

Neutral:

Coming in as a new user, the route setting felt uninspiring and overall a bit "thuggy", some really nice problems, but ultimately not many were interesting enough to make me feel drawn back in to a concerted effort to beat it if I couldn't flash.

The grading of the circuits is very broad and bunched up with most colours overlapping with 2-3 other colours by at least 1 grade either side, to the extent that it's very quickly obviously that there's no point looking at the circuits, and you're much better picking out problems individually which give you the right amount of challenge. That point would be Infuriating...

The Red Goat Climbing Wall is a fantastic bouldering centre full of opportunity and fun! It has limited parking so may be best to park and walk up although outside of working hours there is opportunity to park outside the local businesses and the climbing gym is easily accessible from there, you can’t miss it. Upon arrival, we simply went into the gym and filled out a short electronic waiver. They could see that we were experienced climbers so it was so quick and easy to get climbing once we were asked a few simple safety questions. They supplied us with bouldering shoes in our sizes and there is chalk available if you don’t have your own. The bouldering gym itself was relatively busy, however there was a lot of space as it was HUGE. The training facilities were excellent; there were hang boards, campus boards, pull up bars and more! The grading system was nice as they took emphasis off V grades and instead used colours. We picked out boulders based on how fun they looked rather than difficulty level. Some of the climbs were almost impossible, but we managed to complete quite a lot in the end! The staff were super friendly and so were all the climbers in the gym. Definitely recommend for experienced climbers, but it’s perhaps not as enjoyable for younger children or beginners, due to the difficulty of the climbs. We paid just £10 each for the kids. There is a lovely pizza kitchen there with gorgeous decor and there was what looked like a family party when we went which had a lovely vibe. All in all a wonderful place and we wish we lived closer to...