A friend of mine once said, ‘sport climbing is kind of like having oral from another man, it feels great, until you look between your legs and realise it’s kind of gay’. That friend has never been climbing at Llanymynech Quarry.

As you turn the corner into the quarry you’re faced with the mammoth Foreigners wall, you almost wet yourself with the excitement. That is until you turn to see the 35m monster that lays dormant next to it, the Grid Iron Wall, now thats a wall just begging to be climbed. As far as first impressions go, this wall delivers a knockout first punch.

Ok, so lets get down to the nitty gritty of what this wall has to offer. From the 5 of TGV to the 7B of strawberry Tubin, this wall has enough to offer to keep any over excited climbing monkey busy for the day, without the need for packing extra bananas. If your anything like me and cant help but eye up the tallest and coolest looking route around then you’ll want to try the 6B+ of Curfew, this beast stretches all the way up the Grid Iron Wall, but be careful as you need a 60m rope to climb this bad boy, so don’t get caught short.

However, if you’ve got balls of wood and need something less daunting then I suggest you try some of the nice of 5s on the Foreigners wall, these ones have some really nice easy moves that lull you into a false sense of security before testing you with the tricky crux of the route.

One interesting feature of this place is how little climbing happens on it, it’s still quite a dirty route, I lost count of the number of times I had to dust loose dirt off the rock before I could safely grab it. This is even more evident on the few trad routes in the quarry, placing gear becomes a challenge when most of the cracks are full of loose dirt and stones. The more climbing that’s done in this place, the better it will get and its true potential will be unlocked.

This is not the kind of rock to take that novice friend of yours, unless they enjoy just watching. This is a place for those of you who have a little bit of climbing ability and enjoy pushing yourself to get that ‘I can’t believe I climbed that’ feeling. You have to go check it out for yourself, I guarantee it will put a smile on your face.