Westway Sports Centre

Great climbing routes and fantastic frequency change. Very helpful staff.

Bad value, bad quality. This is a community project which is run like a commercial enterprise with the exception of customer service and care. Rude and unhelpful receptionisits who make mistakes and overcharge you.
Overpriced tennis courts (£22 for an hour indoors) with no air conditioning and bad light which creates blur on the court. Outside courts are in disrepair.
They are trying to introduce gender segregation and Shariah law with splitting tennis sessions into male and female only and only running female ones when the housewives only can attend - how sexist. There are also women only gym sessions available to housewives only. Why doesn't anybody run men only sessions at 11am?
Their gym has no air conditioning, TV, or music, the machine are close to each other, but at least its not that expensive and you don't need membership. They make you do an induction you don't need.
It's impossible to use their lockers - no explanation is offered whatsoever as to how, you have to go to the reception to ask everything, but they are so helpful that they could as well not be there.
Always kids screaming running around, nobody would tell them to behave. Nightmare, you'd be well advised to stay away.

A great place, run professionally, with great climbers involved in the route setting. Really nice.

Many routes are set on mock rock (rather than the totally flat planes used elsewhere) and it's great to remember your footwork.

The bouldering area is very complete, with an improvers League for those not yet tackling very specific problems: it's a group of 20 problems reset every month, ranging from V0 to V6 (?) which you try according to your possibilities.

Only drawbacks: walls only go halfway to the top, the other half is like a tent so that in winter, it's bloody freezing!

If sky-high lead climbs and sport routes are your thing, and you couldn’t really give a darn about bouldering, then this is your home. Based deep within West London near Latimer Road tube, this behemoth of a climbing centre is part of the larger Westway sports centre. It actually uses the A40 as its roof, so I hope the lorries passing don’t get too heavy! It appears that the centre’s designers have created it to give the impression of being exposed to the elements (it’s not outside or anything, but air is allowed to move freely through the centre, which is good in summer but really no fun at all in winter.
It has some very diverse problems from beginners slabs to some scary looking overhangs for all you experts out there. It’s similarly friendly, like the Castle atmosphere, and is priced at £40 a month if you get a monthly membership. Casual climbing is a bit pricey though, at just under a tenner, before you’ve even registered or hired your shoes/harness, if you haven’t got your own.
If you want to get in, you must past a standard test to show that you can belay safely, and tie yourself to your harness and therefore not be a potential liability. Pass that, and the wall is all yours.

There are three major climbing centers throughout London: Mile End, the Castle and The Westway. The Westway in my opinion is the best of the three; Mile End is wonderful for a day of bouldering…as for the most part that is all it offers, the extensive 'monkey room’ and the main rooms contains a wide variety of grades, and the system board is second to none. At the Castle the lead routes are incredible. However, at The Westway the best of both leading and bouldering are combined. The Westway has one campus board with three columns of rungs; it also has two system rooms, one with circuits (which most recently were set by Neil Gresham), and another (called the plant room) with a wide variety of holds to practice moves on and to improve strength. The bouldering areas are divided, the front wall contains routes which are usually graded V0-V5/6 and the 'Fridge’ (the back bouldering wall) has routes which go from V2-V10+! The top roping goes from (french grades) 3-6C+ and the leading goes from 5+ to 8b! Thus, the Westway has a little something for everyone.

The climbing wall at the westway is a fun activity to try and makes a change from your normal gym/run type of exercise. It is quite expensive as a one off as you have to join the centre and hire the equipment but if you intend on going a lot you can buy a monthly pass which takes the price down. As a first timer I was given a 'novice’ stamp and off I went. Judging by the amount of people there its a popular pastime. The walls are off various heights and have different grades according to which colour holds you choose to climb on. Once you get over the initial 'oh god I’m really high up and could fall off at any time’ type feeling its actually really fun. My arms were aching the next day though!