Broughton is a brilliant bouldering wall made even better with the production of the climbing wall/ bouldering guide.

From 1991 onwards
Before the guide was produced many climbers used to go to the wall and do the same old half-dozen problems visit after visit. Occassionally, perhaps, they'd try something new or mix in with someone else and work their problems as well. But, basically, the number of problems many people did was severely limited. Most climbers also tended to play to their strengths and this reduced the effectiveness of the wall as an aid to improving their overall climbing performance.
From about 1994 onwards Dave Johnson organised a number of bouldering competitions at the wall. He marked the holds used on a competition problem with chalk. For weeks, sometimes months, after each comp activists would add the chalk marked problems to their regular repertoire. When the chalk rubbed off, or the problems were changed for another comp, apart from a few rare exceptions, the problems became lost.

From 1996
Dave Hinton had the idea of numbering each hold so problems could be recorded. Showing surprising initiative, he single handedly numbered and, after some discussion, also named sectors 1 to 3. He left sector 4 considering it of little value as a training aid ("that's for puffs", he said). Once the numbers and letters were in place he gave as many people as he could get hold of a blank grid and asked them to record all the problems they knew. These problems then formed the basis of the original guide.
The original guide had 65 problems from 5b to 6c+ as well as the two traverses known as The Big One and The Little One. The hardest problem, and the one and only 6c+ at that time, was the sequence: A, B, V, 84, Bar, with only smears and named holds for feet, on sector 2. It was first done by Tony Ryan when he was a member of the British competition team. The Big One traverse was first done by Ian Vickers, on sight, in a head-to-head final to separate the winners at one of Dave Johnson's comps. Ian was the only competitor to complete the route. An awesome feat to achieve, unseen, straight out of isolation and under competition pressure. Later, Guy Maddox used to use it to warm up on!
Recording problems also threw up a number of interesting issues. For instance, what exactly is a smear and is it in anyway different from a feature? How do you specify what constitutes a legitimate sitting or seated start? Believe it or not we actually discussed these, and other issues, while we climbed at the wall until arriving at solutions which satisfied everyone (well, almost everyone anyway!).

From 1998
Next, Dave Hinton turned his attention to the woodie in the climbing cellar. This feature had been built in 1995 by Dave Johnson and friends. Each hold had originally been given a name. Some of them were quite long, some funny, some provocative even. Each hold's name was written in felt tip somewhere near to it on the overhanging board. This made recording and finding a problem quite a difficult and lengthy process, but people managed. Initially, problems were recorded in a school exercise book kept in the cellar until it disappeared.

At around the same time as a new, thicker, book was kindly donated to record woodie problems in, Dave Hinton started to revamp the facility. He made some new holds and plundered some from the systems board in the main hall built by Dave Marsh. He also devised and implemented a simpler hold numbering system based on the system used on the main wall. The changes were not universally welcomed but most people agreed they were for the best. Moreover, The new system, based on numbers rather than names, certainly made recording and finding problems much easier.

It was also decided that as the British technical grading system wasn't fine tuned enough to reflect the variety and difficulty of the problems on the woodie the Hueco V grading system would be used instead. Problems on this facility are still predominently assigned V grades. For simplicity, problems on the woodie are recorded in their own section in the guide.

From 2000
In 2000 Colin Struthers and Pete Cahill numbered up sector 4 on the right-hand side of the main wall. Almost instantly this added another 100 or more problems to the guide. As sector 4 is set at a much easier angle than the other sectors it also opened up a whole new range of problem types with a whole new range of movement possibilities. Interestingly, the grades on this sector are the ones most often disputed. This is probably because many people are unused to doing, and grading, serious problems on this sector and at this angle yet.

Around this time Matt Leigh also recorded the first problem on the campus board - a facility built in 1996 by Dave Johnson. Saddly, the systems board built by Dave Marsh fell into a state of disrepair. There are, however, tentative plans to resurrect it in a new position in the main climbing hall - ask Dave (Chippy) Hinton for details.
With a guide to tick through the wall became increasingly re-envigorated. Attendance figures started to rise while on the various walls and facilities people started to look for new problems to fill the obvious gaps. Very many climbers, with vastly differing climbing styles and strengths, have now visited the wall and added new problems to the guide, not just the local activists. That is why there is such a wide range of problems and movement types to be found in the guide. This encourages climbers who use the guide to develop a greater range of movement skills and techniques to add to their perhaps previously restricted repertoire of moves. On top of this, the sheer number of problems that came to be recorded also encouraged creative climbers to develop new and different training methods, strategies and systems. One such strategy was the recent introduction of a fun winter bouldering competition based on 25 problems picked randomly from the guide run by none other than that man Dave Hinton!

These are just some of the reasons why the Broughton guide is such an excellent document and training aid. Additionally, and by way of a huge compliment to a great idea, a number of other walls have now started to number holds in the style of Broughton. Some have even adopted the Broughton guide format for recording and disseminating problems.

The dissemination of the guide has been an evolving process. Initially, Dave Hinton simply passed round photo-copies of the original guide to anyone interested. But of course the original guide quickly became out of date as new problems were identified. Mike Gennaro offered to update the guide and even ran spiral bound copies off to hand out at the wall. Mike also copied the guide on to floppy disc for a few people. One of these was Ian Patterson; he then emailed the guide to those able to receive email at that time. Later still Mike handed over the recording of problems to Nick Colton and as more and more people came to have access to email he built up a list of those who wanted the guide emailed to them and sent them updates as they became available.

The guide first went on the internet in 1999 when it was put on Nadim (Sid) Siddiqui's site megagrip.co.uk. In 2001 it was also put on Carl Dawson's Kirklees climbing site. In late 2001 big Pete Cahill took over the job of recording new problems on the guide. He also registered the domain name broughtonwall.co.uk for the purpose of having somewhere to place the guide where it could be continually updated, which would also serve as a focus for information about Broughton climbing wall.

From 2008
www.broughtonwall.co.uk falls into disrepair. The cellar is back, and the wiki is online. Bring it on.