Did most of my PPL training at Maastricht (EHBK) in the Southern NL. Used to fly down to Spa in Belgium (EBSP) with our instructor and another student pilot for circuit training.
Spa can certainly be 'character building'. Its 800m strip is sited high on the Ardennes just below a high ridge and invariably had near constant 90-degree crosswinds. Every photo I have shows the windsock fully extended across the runway. Gusts were frequently 35-45kts. In short, it always seemed to be a bitch of a place to learn to fly.
We'd do 10-15 circuits each most weeks. After about 5 or 6 weeks I seriously wondered if I'd ever get this flying thing licked. I'd be climbing out of the plane drenched in sweat having had to fight vicious X-winds all the way down. Some days my go-arounds outnumbered my landings!
What I didn't realise was that the instructor was deliberately training us at the most demanding airfield he knew in the region. After several months we could comfortably repeat endless combinations of deadstick / short-field / soft-field landings in almost any wind conditions there. Having flown all around the world in the years since then, I have encountered nothing more difficult than Spa at its worst.
So the blood, sweat and fear was worth it. If you train for the worst conditions, everything else is straight-forward. Also it prepares you in case conditions deteriorate unexpectedly somewhere one day.
Stick with it! It's worth it.
