Climbing Boulder, Treverlen Park

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 8 May 2021

This is quite a park! It opened in late 2019 and occupies the land formerly occupied by a high school and a primary school. The deal seems to have been that since the new schools were pinching recreational land, the land the former schools were sitting on would be turned into recreational land, therefore keeping the division of land the same. At first I assumed this was a sculpture, which did strike me as rather odd, given the park's residential location. It was the ground surrounding the boulder - which is actually two boulders joined by a Stonehenge-ish horizontal section - that gave it away. It's that bouncy stuff that's been around for ages now, there to minimise cuts and bruises when the inevitable happens on climbing apparatus. It is extremely well designed as some sides look easier to climb than others. I went up by what was definitely the easiest ascent and still got a bit stressed coming back down, despite the bouncy ground and the top only being about 10 feet high! Websites do give the reason for the park's odd name but it's all a bit hard to fathom. There seems to be some ongoing dispute between the locals and the council about park names - Portobello Park gets mentioned but the dispute looked too exhausting to get into the guts of it. So 'Treverlen', which might or might not be a name given to this area when there was nothing here but bogland in the Middle Ages, was settled on as nobody could take offence. That's my take on it all anyway!

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