Climbing Walls in Newcastle

Bouldering in Newcastle and Gateshead

Climb Newcastle runs two bouldering centres a short walk apart. The Pool is built inside Byker's old swimming pool on Shipley Place, under a minute from Byker Metro, with setting aimed more at younger climbers, a dedicated kids' room and a cellar training area. The Valley, in a warehouse on Byker Bank in the Ouseburn, is the bigger of the two, with the Scarpa competition wall, the Wave Cave, a slab and a downstairs training area with Moon Boards at 25 and 40 degrees, wood boards and weights. One ticket or membership covers both, and both centres take cards only.

Eden Rock Newcastle, the Tyneside branch of the group that also runs walls in Carlisle and Edinburgh, is two minutes from Walkergate Metro on Benfield Business Park. It has a competition wall, a Beastmaker training wall and an LED board, a gym with a sauna, and a separate area for under-6s. South of the river, Friction Bouldering on Saltmeadows Road was Gateshead's first dedicated bouldering gym, with a kids' wall, a yoga studio and a gym upstairs.

Roped climbing and auto-belays

Newcastle Climbing Centre fills the former St Mark's church on Shields Road with over 1,200 square metres of climbing under the old roof and stained-glass window. The central walls run the full height of the building for top rope and lead, with an 8m roof, and there are ten auto-belay lines, lower walls for novices and a bouldering zone. It is the place to learn to belay or lead in the city: it runs a three-session introductory course, a five-week adult beginner class and a learn-to-lead course.

In Wallsend, the roped wall at Hadrian Leisure Centre is run by North Tyneside Council as instructor-led sessions rather than open climbing, with junior sessions for ages 8 to 15 and an adult session on Wednesday evenings, and harnesses and shoes included.

Prices and passes

In October 2026 an adult day pass in Newcastle cost between £10.50 at Friction and £15 at Newcastle Climbing Centre (£13.50 for members), with Climb Newcastle at £11.50 and Eden Rock at £12.50 for members. Monthly passes were mostly £50 to £55. Shoe hire is usually £3 to £4 on top, and most walls sell 10 or 11-visit punch cards. Students do well here: Newcastle Climbing Centre charges students £6.50 on Wednesday and Friday daytimes, and Eden Rock has a £32 student month.

Beginners and kids

All the commercial walls ask you to register online first. Climb Newcastle and Eden Rock run short adult inductions, Friction has a four-week intro to bouldering and a weekly adult beginners' class, and Newcastle Climbing Centre offers one-hour tasters. For children, The Pool takes climbers from age 3 and runs the Rock Stars and Academy coaching, Friction has Wild Climbers for ages 3 to 6 and NICAS from 7, and Newcastle Climbing Centre has kids' clubs every day in term time. At most walls teenagers from 14 can be assessed to climb without an adult.

Clubs and free climbing

The Northumbrian Mountaineering Club, publisher of the Northumberland Bouldering Guide, lists Newcastle Climbing Centre, Climb Newcastle and Sunderland Wall as its winter wall venues. For free outdoor bouldering, the boulder park at Whickham Thorns in Dunston, across the A1 from the Metrocentre, was the first man-made outdoor boulder park in Britain when it opened in 1998, and anyone can use it.

Climbing outdoors in Northumberland

The best-known outdoor climbing near Newcastle is on Northumberland's Fell Sandstone and whinstone. Bowden Doors, by the B6349 between Belford and Wooler, is a roadside crag that dries quickly, with a wave-shaped overhang at its northern end and a nesting-bird restriction on part of the crag in June and July. Kyloe in the Wood, a woodland crag about 10 km to the north, is open to climbers all year. Nearer the city, Crag Lough and Peel Crag drop straight down from Hadrian's Wall, with many of the county's best easier routes on north-facing whinstone that is slippery when wet. The sandstone is soft: the Northumbrian climbing guide asks climbers to stay off it when it is damp and to clean off chalk and tick marks. Further north, The Coliseum in a former Morpeth cinema is a bouldering wall on the way to the crags.

For walls south of the Tyne, see our pages for Sunderland and County Durham and Teesside, or the guide to climbing in the UK.