Forget pubs and restaurants, the lockdown reopening I am desperate for is the climbing wall

Last summer, I walked to the same spot in the same disused playpark in east London three times a week. There, I’d see a rotating cast of people, mostly men. After a few weeks, I began to recognise the same faces, though we’d never go so far as to nod or smile. Really, we’d all have preferred to be there alone.

Our shared bond was simply that we’d made a discovery: the orange netting encasing a climbing frame had been partially peeled away, and the structure featured a horizontal bar which was precisely the right height for pull-ups. 

After that, I started to notice people pulling themselves up on all kinds of objects. Low-hanging road signs, basketball hoops, tree branches, football crossbars. At one time, I would have been baffled by people’s willingness to face the inconvenience – and, quite frankly, minor public embarrassment – of dangling from a road sign to keep their biceps from wasting. 

But, after taking up climbing in 2019, a desperation not to lose “progress” made sense to me. In fact, I started thinking perhaps if I wasn’t a mere five foot three I too could scale some signage.

When gyms and climbing centres across England closed on 5 January as part of the third national lockdown, I once again found myself improvising – this time tracking down a kettlebell on eBay and muddling through with YouTube workouts. But a combo of winter weather and lockdown malaise meant I became increasingly likely to take to my bed than pick up a dumbbell after work. 

Before I began bouldering, if you’d have told me I’d be as excited about visiting what is essentially a form of gym as returning to the pub, I would never have believed you. (I’m sure I’d also have had some questions about pubs and gyms being closed for half a year, but hey.)

Feeling physically strong for the first time in my life was intoxicating. After my first-ever session, accompanied by my bouldering-enthusiast uncle, I couldn’t laugh for three days without being in pain.

Before long, though, I could climb upside down, holding onto the ceiling like a spider in Primark leggings.

I had heard women talk about weightlifting and the joy it brought them to feel a degree of physical power for the first time but it didn’t really compute. What would I do with that added strength anyway? But, after a year of spending two or three evenings a week at the wall, I got it.

Despite the knowledge that I still, probably, couldn’t fight off a mugger or lift an IKEA sofa up a flight of stairs by myself, the feeling that my body could be useful for something practical gave me a confidence I’d never realised I didn’t have. 

Watching burly tank-top-clad men work on exactly the same “problems” (the term for bouldering routes) that I was, and encounter the same difficulties, was a strange and unfamiliar experience. I noticed my arms didn’t ache any more when I walked half an hour home with heavy bags of shopping, and I could lift my suitcase into the overhead luggage rack on a train without a kindly, beefier soul offering to help.  

This time next week, my hands will be full of blisters and scratches, my legs will be covered with bruises and, perhaps, I’ll feel that old familiar ache in my diaphragm when someone tells a funny story. But, honestly, I cannot wait.