The freshly opened Harrogate Climbing Centre was our destination at the beginning of the week when Dan, Ems and I fancied a bit of a JR-esque adventure. HCC hasn’t been opened long and you can tell as everything is fresh and clean the walls look great and the holds are all bright and colourful. After entering the centre and filling out the disclaimer form which I signed to say that I could tie a knot, the attendant gave me a piece of rope and asked me to show him….ooops I was hoping Dan or Ems would remind me as the last time I went climbing was about 10 years ago. It quickly became clear to the attendant that I was winging it when I showed him a knot he’d never seen before 
Anyway after we’d got through all that, we headed to the bouldering room, which was pretty cool, the room is divided into two with a central spine. There was a full range of graded routes easy to virtually impossible, with a managers special and a couple of routes that regularly changed, well that’s what I overheard. Total height was about 3.5 metres with a very spongy floor.
After warming up in the bouldering room Dan and Ems decided to climb in the main room, with Ems lead climbing a route. Dan tried to convince me to try it, but when on putting my harness on I notice the manufacture date of 1994 which was when I bought it (Dan was 8 at the time!) and I kind of lost my bottle a little so I headed back to the bouldering room which was now a little too busy.
After a while I got bored, and getting my courage up after 10 years of not climbing I decided to do a big route, I started with a 5 which was relatively easy, moving onto a 6 climb up a spine. Then after that I really had my eye in, and remembered what it was to climb so we moved onto another large 6. I pushed up the route, and it wasn’t until about 7 metres that I started to get the burn and remember the words of my jedi master, “slow and accurate”.
All in all I loved my evening of climbing and remembering what I loved about it….down side was that it was a bit on the pricey side for an evening.