On the 17th of December I went to Namur with Willem, not only because he had VIP tickets to one of the best cyclo-cross races in the calendar, but also because that’s what Belgians do on the weekends during winter (while shame on me, I have never done it before). The whole day was great fun: I got to drive with a manual gearbox again (and I still owe Willem with ~1000 km of driving from our Trans Pyrenees trip :D), we met some interesting people, and of course we got to walk (and here and there slip) around a muddy course while soaking in the atmosphere and taking a few (or ~500) nice pictures. (Yes, we also got to use the VIP shuttle, and got free food and drinks, but that’s not the point.) We saw both the Women and Men Elite races, and while the former delivered a quite unexpected winner, the latter was unquestionably dominated by the reigning world champion, Belgium’s Wout Van Aert. Here is a small selection of the photos, I hope you will like them. (The conditions were not so easy to work with, there was very little light on this foggy, late afternoon, and these cyclists are way too fast even in the mud.)