It all started on Friday, Mark, Jen, Maarten and Daniel headed south in the mobile home lovingly referred to as the Truck, leaving a frozen Amsterdam behind and heading to the barren wastes near Namur in Belgium.

After a quick stop off at the last McD's in Holland we soon arrived to the familiar sight of the refuge. A beer or 2 later Joost and Jeroen shuffled in grinning and happy to partake in a quick beer before bed.

The news that breakfast would be at 8am was received with shocked amazement, especially by the young bucks sleeping in the 'girls gone wild' room, who had plans for a farting contest late into the night.

Anyway, I digress - morning arrived and with it the sun carefully hiding behind a blanket of cloud we layered up and headed out to Beez (pronounced Bai or Bees or Bays).

Surprisingly we were the first on the crag, and soon started ticking off routes on the Pink Floyd section.

To be honest the rock was painfully cold, though with a 'block' every 5 meters or so, feeling could be returned to the fingers and progress could continue - It was here on that very day the White Hand climbing club was established and shall forever be remembered in history :-)

Though the grades were easy, there followed some impressive and bold leads considering that whilst you could see your hand on a hold, you couldn't actually feel it - this just added to the thrill (honest :>)

Towards the end of the day, we made the first of 2 impressive discoveries of the weekend - thanks to 2 local climbers we were introduced to a local watering hole. A great little bar just minutes from the crag where we retreated to treat the frost bite and get some local beer inside us.

That evening, Dan (Just call me YES CHEF!) and Maarten (Carrot chef extraordinaire!) knocked up a Spag-bol fit for... erm hungry climbers.

Full of spag bol, beer and wine, with tired eyes and aching limbs it was a relatively early night.

Sunday started with an eager look out the window to reveal... the climbers dreaded enemy - RAIN! It had rained fairly constantly all night and the outlook wasn't good.

Maarten sneaked off immediately after breakfast as planned, and with Joost and Jeroen making an early dash for home it was left to the die-hards to search out a local climbing wall in Namur. This turned out to be the second impressive discovery. Namur’s’ indoor climbing wall, which was really quite impressive, with some good routes which gave Mark, Jen and I a few hours of fun.

With the sun out we left Namur and headed north - it was fantastic to get some sleep in the back of the heavenly transport we NOW lovingly refer to as 'Mark and Jen's heavenly home on wheels' to their face yet remains 'the Truck' when they're not listening :-)

All in all, an excellent weekend and the first of many for 2010, check out the pictures.