The Ascent

This morning it was a friend’s sixth birthday, and we were invited to Clip N Climb in Richmond, just south of Vancouver. Clip N Climb is a climbing wall franchise for kids – it’s all auto belays and foolproof harnesses and clips, and the children use regular shoes instead of climbing shoes. The walls are brightly lit and with funky shapes, rather than bolt on holds as you’d see in a conventional climbing gym, and both our kids loved it, clambering up again and again.
There’s a wide range of different climbs there, from ladders to cargo nets to leaps between huge poles, so there was plenty to entertain them. There was even a climb on either side of a sheet of perspex so that two children could compete, facing one another.

They burned through an hour there without even blinking, then had cake and we took them home via another play area, a cup of coffee and a stop to buy more booze for tonight.

Tomorrow is my 43rd birthday, so I spent this evening filling myself up with beer, and then trying to persuade the girls to go to sleep. So pretty similar to the rest of the year, I suppose…