The most iconic building in the UK

Can you guess what it is?

For my birthday, (yes my 30th sorry you thought I had stopped talking about that hadn’t you!), my brother brought me a voucher to climb the O2, I have wanted to do this for ages as I know a few people that have done this and said it is amazing. Well on 17th August we went to London with our mum and dad, who wanted to come and watch, and we done the climb! It was BRILLIANT, we were so lucky with the weather as the days before it had been raining so much but the sun was out and that made the views even more amazing.

We arrived and we were given our equipment – a gilet, a harness and climbing shoes then a little chat with our instructor/guide and we were off. You have a piece of equipment that attaches to your harness then that clips onto the guide ropes up the walk way, this walk way is suspended 2 meters from the roof of the O2 and is quite bouncy! You take your climb up and it is split into 4 sections on the way up, the first bit is quite steep and then it starts to level out the closer you get to the summit, here there is a viewing platform where you get 15-20 minutes to take it the amazing 360 degree views.

On the way down is the same process 4 sections and the last part is sooo steep you feel like your toes are going to go through the ends of your shoes! But it really was a brilliant experience.

We learnt some really interesting facts about the O2 which I didn’t know about the building and I thought I would share them with you

The O2 was specifically built to be one of the most iconic buildings in the UK and the world and was created as a monument to space and time

• The Diameter of the O2 is 365m – representing days in the year
• There are 12 yellow masts – representing months in the year
• The summit of the walkway is 52m high – representing weeks in the year

• Over 400 marriage proposals have taken place up at the O2
• Bon Jovi was the first to perform on the roof d has been followed by Thirty Seconds to Mars, Tinie Tempah, McBusted and more
• On average climbers burn 450 calories when scaling Up at the O2, which is equivalent to running for 3.5 miles or swimming 1000m breast stroke
• The meridian line runs just to the left of the Up at the O2 walkway
• Since opening in 2012, Up at the O2 has seen over half a million people walk across the world-famous roof
• It took 22 riggers and industrial abseilers 18 weeks to build the walkway
• Height of the summit is equal to 12 double-decker buses stacked vertically