Hang Tough

May Bank Holiday saw Buxton Spring Fair taking over the town once again. In the past we have attended, the first one saw me being told I couldn’t dangle from a tree! but this year we decided to either Go Big or Go Home with our very own Hang Tough competition…. basically grab hold of a horizontal scaffold pole and hang on till you can’t hang any longer

Tim came up with the ideas and did all the practical work building a scaffolding rig so much credit must go to him.

We were very fortunate that The Rope Race in Marple, Substation in Macclesfield and the BMC had provided prizes so we could run a genuine competition with out much outlay. We had a female, male and junior category which were all heavily contested.

It was a great day and we were busy the whole time through, often with queues of people waiting, at the end of the day we even had to turn people away….. some people hung for a 30 seconds while others, as you can see did some pretty impressive times

The stand out performance weas a young lad called Joel who blew the competition away, staying off the ground for over 12minutes. He has never climbed but won a voucher to go to the Rope Race kids climbing session… so maybe someone to look out for in LA Olympics in 2028!

The competition was great fun and it was brilliant to see everyone having a go but the real reason was the let local people know about the climbing club. Only a week later we have had direct contact with 2 people who we met on the day and another 3 have joined the BuxtonMC Facebook site and hopefully will get in contact soon. We also were able to signpost people to the Substation and to The Roperace for intro the climbing tasters as well, so maybe some of those will filter through to the club.

All in all a great day, so we will be back next year… as Tim pointed out, he’s built it now!