Carrière de Durnal

Crag Summary

This was our first crag of the trip and it was an excellent place to ease into it. Gentle approach, safe base, long but easy climbs. The sandstone had great friction, the lines are quite long and the routes we did were more varied and interesting than they looked from the ground. Nothing too hard on offer though.

The kids had a ball too – lots of space at the base, making potions and blackberry foraging galore. And lots of climbs they could try too. It is clearly popular with beginners and well looked after – even a woodland loo!

• Style: single pitch sport
• Parking: 50.32529, 4.97577
• Topo and Approach details: The Crag plus the route names painted in big blue capitals (!) is more than sufficient for finding your way around. The Crag does mention a topo guide but I could not locate this.
• We visited on: Thursday, 15th August 2024
• Who else was there: we were alone when we arrived (quite early), 5-10 climbers by the time we left – noting that it was a public holiday.

Nearby

After a morning climb we spent the afternoon in the nearby city of Dinant. We timed it for the bathtub regatta imagining a quant little festival… it was actually heaving with crowds and I think we would have discovered more of Dinant on a quieter day! I would have liked to have spent more time looking for all the saxophone statues (Dinant being the birthplace of Adolphe Sax).

We parked near the Dinant Citadel which was well worth exploring too. We took the steps down to the city and the cable car back up.