Bassline - The UK's Longest Urban Roof Climb

So the Warwick roof project, I actually got to hear about this via some DMs on Instagram and the really funny thing was was I was getting really bored with the lack of access of travel abroad over the last few months. I'd gotten to this frustrated state where I'd ended up going on Google and searching for bridge cracks, canal roof bridge, concrete crack, just randomly on Google and funnily enough I found this really good looking bridge and I think it was labeled on the internet as being in Warwick and then I was like well this is just impossible to find an actual Warwick bridge, like there's no geo tag on this, I've got no idea. So then I thought well why don't I just put something on Instagram saying I'm looking for some Warwick climbers who might be in the know and then I got this message back from someone on Instagram saying yeah that's our bridge and we know about this and really coincidentally they'd actually been out maybe the day before and checked out this bridge and have been aiding along it and they thought that somehow I had got news of this project and I was coming down to do it but actually it was complete coincidence. So the way in which I found this was this really weird match-up of Googling plus a local set of students had been trying these projects. When I first went down there to try the roof it was obvious straight away that this was a proper good roof crack, just like the stuff that we've been trying up in Edinburgh and some of the other concrete bridge roof cracks. Totally parallel, really really good quality roof crack climbing and this one here is about 70 foot, maybe 75 foot long. There's a variety of roof sizes on this one actually. I spoke to the guys when I first met up with them, they were there like it was a freezing cold day and I drove down from Sheffield. I think they looked at me like is he just gonna have a go? I didn't really know what to do so I just thought I'll get some friends out, I'll get a rope out, I don't really know what the sizes are like all the way along and whether it was a good size all the way and I haven't really got a warm-up either so I set out on the first attempt just with a set of friends and placing gear as I went and actually as it happened there was a tight spot that I wasn't quite expecting and I got a lot more pumped than I was expecting as well on the first attempt which I think was maybe a combination of being very cold and also having to move out. There's little blocks of concrete and rubble inside the crack so they're constantly falling down on your hands as you're climbing so that was definitely a little bit of an issue. So I went along placing the gear and I must have got to two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along and I just had to take on it and you definitely have to go for a please take me rather than just fall off because actually you're not that far above the water and it'd be really easy to end up, you know, you get caught by the rope but you actually still end up in the water soaking wet which wasn't very appealing because it was about three, four, five degrees celsius that day. I think there was even a tiny little bit of snow on the ground in the areas which were kind of out of the sunlight. I think it maybe snowed a few days beforehand or it was very very frosty. So I had that first attempt which wasn't that productive although I did get some friends in and then I thought right okay I know what I'm doing I'm just going to really go for it on a proper attempt and that time I climbed a little bit more shore on it but as usual because the crack was only one width and you need multiple friends all of the same width which I don't have, I ended up in this scenario of thinking well I'll just gun it right at the end and kind of treat it like a little mini deep water solo and just hope that that last section of the crack doesn't pinch down and get too thin. And even as I was going along that section because I hadn't actually dimmed that bit until my kind of full lead attempt, bits of concrete were falling off on me on that one which was quite distracting actually and I was very pumped like really pumped on that first attempt and as I got towards the end and I could see the railing just kind of winking at me I went for it and I nearly thought oh I've just gone in too hard here and I've cut my feet loose with not much left in the tank and I'm not going to reach the railing but one little swing back in and I grabbed it and it was all good. Definitely pretty pumped on that one, I think it was a really good first route to do down there which would be 5.11 plus maybe 5.12 territory in terms of grade and I would say is one of the most classic concrete roof cracks that I've done so far. Oh it's definitely pumped. I think actually a couple more moves might have fallen off. I got some really cold in the middle section and then I was like trying to hang around and get slightly warm and I got really pumped. I was like thinking about that the whole time going I'm going to place that and I was like I'm too pumped but then I was like oh screw it I'll just fall in the water if I have to. I can't grab enough to fall in the water. Going for the solo lap on the Warwick roof crack project which we ended up calling baseline I think there was some graffiti on the wall which said something around base it seemed like a nice appropriate name to call the line because all the rest of the projects down at Warwick I think are considerably harder. There's some good hard projects to be had down there I think in the 5.13 plus range really tricky paddle hands. So when I decided to come back for the solo lap I did this in the other direction. I think I actually might have done this twice but it seemed fun to try it in two directions and I also had a go at doing it without taping my hands just to see how that would be. This really is testament to how good this particular roof crack is because it's so smooth inside it's actually very very comfortable to do without tape or without rubber jammies on and in reality this maybe makes it a little bit easier as well because the size fits a bit better. There have been problems in the past with ripping gear on these concrete smooth roof cracks but this one felt pretty okay and I think there wouldn't be any issues with it. You can see that there's someone watching in the background whilst I'm going across the river and it's been funny doing these laps of different roof cracks around the country because I think the general public are very interested about what you're doing and why you're doing it. You get a mixture of things like are you bridge maintenance people? Are you spider-man? What have you found in there? What's up with the cobwebs? A lot of people ask about what we're holding inside of the crack. They think there's a pipe or there's holds inside the crack. They really find it hard to grasp this whole thing of how jamming works and I think that's really interesting. The public also ask a lot about whether you've fallen in a lot and that has happened on a few occasions. One particular occasion is we've got another really good solo roof crack venue which is in Doncaster which is maybe half an hour away from Sheffield which myself, Pete, Ollie Tor, Maddy Cope, a number of people have been to now and this is a really friendly shallow water slash deep water solo crack venue because it's in a very nice area, it's properly lit, the water's really clean and you're absolutely sure there's no shopping trolleys or weird dangerous stuff in the water and that's worked out as being a very nice place to go and do a number of laps with. Come on! And all of these roof cracks really are actually, if I'm thinking about it, slightly better versions of the training down the cellar and the reason for that is that when you look at how the feet work or how you feel when the feet work in these concrete bridge roof cracks is it's a lot more comfortable than the wooden cracks that you get when you put two pieces of parallel wood together because there's a slight chamfer on the edge of the concrete so it acts like a groove and when your feet go in you don't have a sharp edge that you're rubbing against. Having no sharp edge on the edge of the crack is so much better and so much more comfortable so you can actually enjoy the climbing a lot more. The other nice thing is with a lot of these routes and these projects is that they're over canals so the bridges aren't that high above the water so it's a very workable height and I think is about as good as it gets really. I've enjoyed so much of this bridge roof climbing, I think there's a lot more potential in it than we realise. I've said this before but I feel like if you get a generation of crack climbers going on these concrete bridge roof cracks and putting some proper time in, this can be converted into the next level of crack climbing outside. This is just a whole other world that's opened up from this form of climbing. It's pure, it's technical, there's no compromise on it and it's really really pumpy so brilliant, I love all of it. Nice!