Legendary rock climbers open new climbing wall in Blackburn

Onyx Climbing Wall on Hill Street near Whitebirk is the new business venture for couple Ian Vickers and Gill Peet, two of the UK's top rock athletes, from Guide.

Ian is an ex-European climbing champion, with 20 years experience and a former international route setter, with hard routes being his forte. 

While Gill also coaches the climbers at Onyx, and represented the GB climbing team from 2009 to 2013, achieving her best World Cup result of 17th. 

She said: "I have rock climbed since I was 12, Ian and I have owned a similar business before, but wanted to move onto something new this year.

"We opened on Thursday (October 26) last week and it has been quite good so far. We have currently marketed it to existing climbers that we know of through social media, but we want to put the word out and encourage new climbers.

"There are no other walls similar in Blackburn, all though there is similar in the North West, we think this is unique for the area."

As lifelong climbers, Gill and Ian had a passion to create and dedicate a place to bouldering where the climbing is designed to make people stronger.

They want to share their passion and expertise in specialised areas of route setting and coaching, and collective experience in owning and managing climbing walls.

Gill continued: "We wanted to do something more niche as a lot of climbing walls are turning into gyms, but we wanted to focus on the climbing in the style of settings to emulate outside climbing.

"It is the same sort of work out for resistance training, but not standing in the gym that could get boring after a while.

"It's renowned as a sociable sport and we really wanted to put that into the community as we are smaller than some of our competitors.

"People know each other and as its a bit cosier, it's a great place to hang out as well as climb."

New and experienced climbers can register for a membership, and under 18's can also try the wall in an induction for £20 for 30 minutes.