Buildering in Belgium

6 replies [Last post]
Posts: 13

Oh god! One day of fooling around in the city, subzero temperatures, and one day of fooling around with editing tools. But I think the result is fairly awesome, to say so objectively. Fresh from the youtubes, here goes my little baby, I'm so proud (you guys are the first to see):

(edit: changed embed)

Admittedly, it might not be as cool if you don't know the story. It might not even be cool then, but here it is anyway.
There's a block of dirt/rock they dug up right outside of Antwerp City, close to where I live. I've been biking past it almost every day eversince they dug it up. For some weird reason they decided to just leave it right in the middle of the intersection of two of the cities main roads. On a winters day when our climbing trip got cancelled, we decided to just get our climbing gear out and have some fun.
The block is pretty cube-ish. One side is overhanging with cool holds of actual rock and dubious footholds (see video). Here we found 2 routes, one easy (good holds) and one hard (slopers). The other sides were mostly dirt with fist-sized rocks in it. Finding a way to traverse all around the four sides was a challenge, but in the way that walking over a bridge with broken planks is challenging. We called the boulder "De Donkere Poort", which means "The Dark Gate".

I hope you like it, I spent a whole day working on it, and it's my first. Comment all you want, you don't have to be nice just constructive.

I don't know what the rules are for user-generated content on buildering.net but I would be honored if you would link to it somewhere. I could try to get up a HQ version as well. Almost every shot features small pieces of rock or dirt flying off, but they got lost in the YT compression, so did our icy breath clouds (subzero temperatures).

Greets to the buildering.net community, thanks for the inspiration.

Ard, I want more videos in the videos section!

ps: windows movie maker messed up my ending sync and most of the audio/video sync as well...

you rock my dinner plate.

Posts: 1139

Doh. Didn't get to see it because of a copyright issue with a 3rd party? Odd. Anyway, looking forward to seeing it...

Posts: 13

I put it on megavideo, they don't care as much about copyrights (it's just the music... and Rival Schools doesn't even exist anymore!). Sorry bout the ads though. (Changed the embedded video in the original). Better quality but even more out of sync audio/video...

you rock my dinner plate.

Posts: 37

Actually the first part of the video is called bouldering! Eye-wink Which is also fun. The second part is buildering and looks like a nice wall, but it'd be impossible for me, and I suggest you too should try something easier first, it looks very challenging. A quick search reveals there are some interesting bridges in Antwerp (I love climbing their structures), you might want check some of them out. Here's an example:
http://flickr.com/photos/slightlydigital/417957217/

snow chaos

Posts: 13

The 'boulder' we're climbing is actually a part of the city wall that was dug up a few years back. So technically, it is an artificial structure. As stated it consists mostly of stones cemented together with dirt and smashed red bricks. Also this isn't our first buildering adventure, just the first one we filmed and during the day Smiling
And we have some bridge-projects Smiling

you rock my dinner plate.

Posts: 37

Ah, in that case I owe you an apology, your terminology is correct, my bad entirely. Eye-wink By the way, if you get photos of those bridges, let me know.

snow chaos

Posts: 13

warning: This doesn't matter at ALL

they removed the boulder/city wall the past year. Our ascents will never be repeated...
I also found out it dated back to the 10th century. Sweet!

Happy newyears!
I got my hands on a better camera and video editing tools, so to be continued...

you rock my dinner plate.