How people are falling in love on climbing walls

Megumi and Gordon McKillop didn’t meet on a dating app, or at work, or through a mutual friend.
Instead, they met when Megumi was attempting a tricky climbing route at their local bouldering centre, and was – by her own admission – falling off the wall.
Gordon, who’d been climbing for more than 10 years, asked if Megumi wanted some advice. Then, later that day, when Megumi, a relative newbie at the sport, cut her hand on the wall, Gordon jumped in to offer her an antiseptic wipe.
That night, Gordon, now 42, decided to look Megumi, 33, up on Facebook to check how her name was spelt. But he accidentally sent her a friend request.
That was in November 2021, shortly after Megumi had relocated from Canada to Scotland. Ten months later, they moved in together. In February 2024, the couple got married – and, true to form, the wedding was dominated by climbing.
Their wedding reception was a picnic at Dumbarton Rock, a popular climbing sport in western Scotland, the photographer was one of Gordon’s climbing friends, and they spent their honeymoon in Kalymnos, a popular rock climbing destination in Greece.
To this day, they still go climbing at the Newsroom in Glasgow, the climbing wall where they met. They’ve befriended a number of other couples who met through bouldering, too.