Explore #2 of the 3 Eurovirgins and a Europro Tour

After Darren, Richie and I had all lost of European exploring virginities in glorious fashion at the CDC our gang pressed on to the next targets on our map. Despite having been up all night, our success at the CDC and a new bright sunny spring day made us all feel in pretty good shape.

Our second target of the weekend, a small countryside house, turned out to be a fail as it had recently been sealed tight. But we were delighted to get quickly back to winning ways with our next target – this beautiful former Monastery.

History
This former carmelite convent with Gothic Revival church dates back to the early 20th century. The church has a square tower on the right side of the façade, and a polygonal stair tower to the left. The interior features include walls plastered with neo-Gothic paintings, wooden confessionals incorporated into each side wall, and a neo-Gothic organ.

Our explore
Gaining access wasn’t without incident – the only access we had intel on had been sealed, but after some careful hunting we found a way in…only for Darren to be convinced that he saw someone walk across a corridor just in front of us! We all froze, and exchanged furtive whispers: “are you sure?”, “what did you see?”, “can you hear anything?” “shhh, listen! What was that?” etc. After a few minutes of intent listening we heard further noises, and were convinced that someone else was in there with us. However, we were also fairly sure that whoever was in there would also have heard us, and was therefore unlikely to be security, as they’d have shouted out or come looking for us. Leaving without exploring was clearly not an option, so we cautiously proceeded further into the building, pausing for a quick corridor shot, before focussing on the beautiful neo-Gothic church. We were undisturbed for the rest of our explore, so think our mysterious unseen companion was either a homeless person who had found shelter there… or perhaps a ghost? 😉

[click on a photo to view large]

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The beautiful neo-Gothic organ.

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Up in the attic!

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The large dome in the centre is the vaulted centre of the ceiling.

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The convent accommodation didn’t look particularly inspiring (this gives you an idea), so we stuck with the church.

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A couple more shots of that beautiful organ.

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One of the wooden confessionals.

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Just time for a quick group shot before we took our leave.

As always, thanks for looking – plenty more reports from Belgium coming up in the next few weeks, so please sign up to follow this blog if you haven’t already done so!

Cheers
Adam X