World's Largest Indoor Ice Wall In Holland...

Okay, Scottish winter conditions can be a tad unreliable, but Holland? Come on...

Or maybe come on over, because what's claimed to be the world's largest and Europe's first purpose-built indoor ice wall has opened at the Globe shopping complex in the Nettherlands. Actually it's not the first, there's one at the giant Tiso Outdoor Experience store in Glasgow, but it's the only other one that we know of and even better, it's been built by a British company.

Established UK climbing wall manufacturer Entreprises put the wall together for outdoor store Bevor and they say it's 'cold and wet...just like the real thing'. The wall is formed by applying ice and snow - or maybe just water - to a bare wall at a temperature of -15 C to form two ice-climbing zones for either practice or competition.

For added realism the temperature can be varied to simulate a freeze / thaw cycle and give different ice conditions - yep, at last you can scratch up tenuous 5mm-thick water ice in perfect safety. The wall is 10 metres high and there's a floor area of some 36 square metres while 150mm insulated walls and triple-glazed viewing windows stop the thing from melting.

If you're off to Holland and fancy an indoor ice fix, you can find full details of the wall's location at the Bever web site.

Stop Press - Scotland To Go Bigger...

If you're feeling jealous, just be patient; Scotland is getting its own even larger artificial ice wall. Work is scheduled to begin on The Ice Factory at Kinlochleven near Glencoe, which will have a wall standing over 13 metres high and cover over 400 square metres.

The facility will be on the site of the old Alcan works and is supported by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. Should be ideal for those rare Scottish winter days when conditions are crap and another eight hours vegging in the caff is losing its appeal. Not that that ever happens of course...