On the 5th January 2017 an intrepid group of our Young Adult Carers (YACs) took a trip to the Leeds Wall indoor
climbing centre.
It was a great trip and the YACs who attended all said that they thoroughly enjoyed it. We were given expert tuition by the staff at the Leeds Wall and everyone who attended plucked up the courage to have a go at climbing. This included being shown how to put on the safety harness, how to tie on the climbing rope with the correct safety knot and, of course, climbing as high as we dared up the walls!
A personal highlight was having a go on the automatic belay device. This is a device which you are attached to by a rope which automatically lowers you down once you have climbed as high as you can – or as high as your nerves will let you! The key difference between this device and having another person belaying for you, is that, when you initially lean away from the wall to start coming back down, whilst a person belaying can lower you very slowly, the automatic device takes a few feet to kick in. This means that when you first lean away from the wall you start falling and have to trust that the machine will catch you! Doing this from the top of a 40 foot climbing wall was extremely scary and it certainly took a few minutes for me to stop shaking once I got back down!

If you are interested in finding out more about our Young Adult Carer groups and events please contact Jo or Adam, our Young Adult Carer Support Workers.

Adam Savage – Young Adult Carer Support Worker