A ray of Italian cycling sunshine on a soggy Stockholm morning

Posted on May 21, 2013 by kevinmayne

Everywhere I go at the moment it seems to start raining.

Stockholm was no different. A sunny evening turned into a very soggy morning.

However I had an absolutely delightful breakfast coffee to look forward to at a rather special café on the Stockholm scene,

The Bianchi café.

Italian café, Italian staff, fantastic cappuccino and celeste blue bicycles displayed almost as art. Pictures of some of the great Bianchi riders rotating on an electronic screen in the window.

In the back of the café a very good bike shop selling everything you could wish for to go with your passion – from caps to cufflinks.

The breakfast coffee was all the better because I had it in the company of Tony Gimaldi whose family owns the Bianchi brand. He told me the great story of how his family’s Swedish industrial conglomerate got into the bike business in Sweden but some years later after a number of acquisitions got the chance to buy the struggling Bianchi business.

When he went to Italy to start integrating the business into their other bike businesses Tony not only found his Italian family roots it was very, very clear from his passion that he fell hook, line and sinker for the Bianchi legend. He was great company and I suspect we could have talked for hours had time allowed, especially in that setting.

Any bike nuts going to Stockholm – this is your place.

http://bianchicafecycles.com/

Cycle touring revolutions – Cycling in Lower Franconia

Posted on May 20, 2013 by kevinmayne

I was in Schweinfurt visiting the German training and development centre for SRAM recently.

My main reason for being there was to talk about cycling advocacy to SRAM’s urban cycling event. However at the end of the two day event we had a few hours before I had to get my train back to Belgium so we were offered a social test ride for a couple of hours. As the weather was delightful and spring-like it would be rude not to, wouldn’t it? So this was an opportunity to take in another region I knew nothing about – Lower Franconia, almost in the centre of Germany.

My recent cycle touring in Germany has been limited to a few sessions around the Bodensee (Lake Constance) where I had seen the evidence of the boom in leisure cycling in Germany. But here I saw other dimensions of that boom that had been less apparent in the summer holiday throngs in the south.

We were taken a short distance out of Schweinfurt into the countryside to a delightful area around Gerolzhofen and the popular rural area of the Steigerwald which has attractive villages and delightful countryside.

Germany cycling

From there we were able to sample the impressive network of segregated cycle tracks and minor roads for a couple of hours until we ended up crossing the River Main by ferry and enjoying a snack in a terrace café overlooking the river and its busy cycle route in Obereisenheim.

I was hugely impressed by the number of cycle tourists I saw and the facilities we used but on a working day the people who were out were almost universally older (let’s say seniors to be polite). I had heard about Germany’s grey cycling revolution but I had never seen it personified, it was extraordinary that a busy cycle route could be 90% one demographic.

And the next revolution was what they were riding. I have blogged before about the way E-bikes have taken over at the German trade shows and I know that in the last couple of years they have taken a huge slice of the market, but I hadn’t seen where they were being used. Now I could see it writ large – nearly 50% of the bikes we saw were E-bikes, often in pairs. And the lovely little town of Volkach had adopted it so much they had put an ugly E-bike charging station in the middle of their attractive town square.

Franconia Germany

It seemed a bit incongruous, a glorified luggage locker in a medieval square, but it further reinforced the point that if you want elderly German cycle tourists that means catering for the new E-bike phenomenon.

In fact the café we ended up at down on the River Main only had one customer type the whole time we were there. Cyclists. I know numerous studies have been done showing the economic value of cycle tourists in rural areas but if we could count the percentage of turnover for the Gasthof zum Schiff in Obereisenheim it would indeed be impressive.

All in all an excellent afternoon out, great scenery, nice company and the chance to see a number of cycling trends all brought to life in one place. There is little wonder that cycling is growing solidly in Germany, they really have so many positive things happening they all seem to complement each other.

In praise of a good hedge.

Posted on May 15, 2013 by kevinmayne

When I am beating my head against a headwind on the open fields of Wallonia what I really want is a good hedge. A nice embankment and a proper bank of thick bushes to break up the monotony. A couple of weeks ago I rode nearly 50km into head winds and it was a pretty painful experience, I would have been happy to hide behind a single tree towards the end.

Belgian farmers seem to have adopted the trend that British farmers got into from the 1970s onwards when every hedge had to be removed to allow the plough to get as close to the edge of the field as possible, regardless on the impact on landscape or wildlife, partly encouraged by EU subsidies that used to pay subsidies to farmers by the productive metre.

Later we learned just what that was doing to biodiversity and erosion and some farmers started restoring them but here the message doesn’t seem to have got through.

And of course when they need the hedge to keep in animals the cheap response is to put up a wire fence with an electric charge round it which isn’t a lot of fun for any human or animal that happens to bump into them. Poor Murphy found that out in the last two weeks since livestock got introduced to the field next door. He spent two days in the house refusing to come out after the fence bit him.

http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/files/hockney-press-image-sheet-1088.pdf

Royal Academy Press Release. The Big Hawthorne, 2008. Courtesy of the Artist. © David Hockney. Photo: Richard Schmidt

And the loss of those hedges is just such a shame right now when the blossom is out and there are wildflowers everywhere. Last year the highlight of my visit to the David Hockney exhibition “A bigger picture” was his series of paintings of hawthorn hedges in East Yorkshire throughout the spring. There is a man who really understands the power of the hedge in the English landscape.

One of the best talks I went to when I was a member of the Chilterns Conservation Board was a great presentation by our farming officer who explained “what makes a first class hedge.” Sounds like something for gardening geeks but it turned into a fascinating presentation about the role of hedges as “wildlife freeways” allowing certain plant species, wild birds and small mammals to survive and to move about between communities in shelter and protected from predators.

They make a wonderful feature of some areas of traditional English countryside and help create that patchwork quilt effect so beloved of artists and painters but photography of the landscape during the 20^th Century shows just how much they have disappeared.

A good hedge for a cyclist also has many other uses:

The perfect hedge is just right.

Thick enough to provide a windbreak and a shelter.

And exactly shoulder height for a cyclist, which means it is far too high for a motorist to see over, but low enough that we can enjoy secret views everywhere we go.

When we come back from a ride we can wax lyrical about something they have never seen and will never see. That’s a perfect hedge and Belgium needs a lot more of them.

Cycling across Wallonia shows that Belgium isn’t just a low country, it is an upside down country.

Posted on May 9, 2013 by kevinmayne

A few weeks ago I took a day off work to ride much of the way across my newly adopted home region of Wallonia – the French speaking bit of Belgium. I was headed south to Huy to watch the Fleche Wallonne cycle race (post here) but what I also wanted was to stretch my cycling boundaries and explore. And in doing so I was able to unravel a previous confusion about the cycling landscape and prove to myself that cycling in Wallonia is indeed upside down.

I also found brilliant riding. I don’t think I have never met anyone who has told me about touring round Belgium so I had no idea what to expect when I came here. A few people had done trips to the WW1 battlefields over in Flanders and I know the odd person who has made the pilgrimage to the big bike races but I just don’t recall “cycle touring in Belgium” being a common discussion point amongst my UK cycling community.

People seeking flat and cyclist friendly riding go to the Netherlands. And to our south France is the biggest cycle touring market in Europe, possibly the world. But as in so many other things dear Belgium gets, well a little bit lost.

On this particular day I experienced two, maybe three very distinctive landscapes which in their own right would provide part of a brilliant tour, both of which show off some of the distinctive elements of Wallonia. It isn’t perfect, cyclists don’t get anywhere near as much help with routes as in Flanders, the Netherlands or France and some of the road surfaces are abominable, but there is no reason for southern Belgium not to be a great cycle touring destination.

Above all else it is completely deserted. Again I have say it, come here fellow cyclists, it is so quiet. A normal Wednesday, a weekday when people are going about their business, the commuter routes into Brussels were as congested as ever and yet I rode for hours and hours on apparently empty roads, hardly seeing a car except when I crossed busier main roads.

Farmers were busy, but apparently nobody else.

And there is a tolerance for cyclists that far exceeds any experience I have had in the UK, and is a complete contrast to Brussels. Maybe it is the lycra, as if lby ooking like a sporty cyclist you seem to spark a certain recognition in the Walloons, but whatever it is I love being treated like a valuable property not an inconvenience.

Upside down country?

I knew that I was heading for the hilly bit of Belgium. Not massive climbs but clearly from descriptions of the Ardennes and the profiles of the bike races it was going to be an area of steep sided hills. Not so different from Brabant Wallon where I live, but probably steeper and bigger. As I like hilly country for cycling I was looking forward to it.

But what I didn’t know much about was the terrain in between, a 50-60km section between the main towns of Wavre and Namur. My previous excursions had touched on flatter terrain and open farmland, but the maps didn’t show any transition to the Ardennes which was a bit odd, I assumed it must start to climb somewhere.

That was almost how it turned out. I had half a ride on gently rolling but exposed farmland. And then I hit the valleys at the very edge of the Ardennes and I was suddenly plunged into steep sided gorges with rock walls and dark stone cottages that could have been plucked out of the English Peak District or the French Perigord Nord.

But the key to understanding the Walloon landscape revealed itself to me as I made that transition. I hit valleys, not hills.

When that realisation dawned suddenly I could make sense of a whole lot of landscapes, not only on that day, but around where I live south of Brussels. I appear to have got this whole region upside down.

I haven’t studied the geology in a text book, so go with me here, it might make sense to a cyclist.

Through Northern France and into Belgium is a wide coastal plan that gradually rises as it heads inland. There are ripples and lumps and bumps, but this is largely flat country. Further north in the “Low Countries” it stays close to sea level however further inland from the coast this plain rises to 100, maybe 150 metres above sea level. In the East in what is now the Ardennes the plain must have been pushed up by geological forces higher and forms a plateau around 700 metres high, but still these are not really mountains thrust up into the landscape, it’s geology was pretty flat when it was laid down.

So there should be no real hills.

Except that there are rivers, which have cut downwards into the soft soils and rocks over thousands of years. So instead of ups, there are downs. Instead of peaks we have flats, when you complete a big climb you end up back on the flat land. It is like the reverse of everywhere I have ever cycled, when you come off a flat section you go down, then you climb back up. That is a right pain if you feel like a bit of freewheeling after a long hill climb!

Where I live in there are many small rivers like La Lasne, Smohain, l’Argentine and La Mazerine, each of which has carved out one of our steep valleys 50-70 metres deep. This makes it feel like constant climbing if you have to travel north to south as I do every time I ride to Brussels.

On my cycle tour across Wallonia I started with a few of these dips and climbs of Brabant Wallon however I was quickly into the an area without significant streams or rivers, so when I climbed out of the last valley to Mont St Guibert there was nearly 50km of gently rolling flat farmland in front of me which will appeal to any lover of cycle tourism on tiny agricultural roads between old farms and sleepy historic villages. Think the Netherlands, think East Anglia, think the Vendee depending on your previous cycling experiences. Dramatic it isn’t, delightful it is. The little towns and villages like Chastre, Walhain, Grand Leez, Waret-la-Chausée just slipped by with the spires of their churches and manor houses making attractive punctuation points on the horizon.

However it is pretty exposed and a nagging headwind really took the edge of my pace, I would really rather have had some variety at times.

I only really understood how this fitted together with the Ardennes this when I reached the valley of the Meuse just east of Namur and a great vista opened out in front of me. But instead of looking up as I had expected to the forthcoming hills I looked across?

Ahead of me the plain could have continued climbing gently and eventually reach the 600 metres of Belgium’s highest point. But it was deeply cut by the many rivers and streams feeding into the Meuse and what I could see from my vantage point was not a series of hills but a tumbling mass of valleys.

The hills of the Ardennes are hills of sorts, but their main shape comes from crossing the valleys, not climbing hills. They do end up a lot bigger than around Brussels because the plain has been rising all the way so the valleys can cut deeper over time, but the much of the landscape is still just open and flat, just that it is 200-300 metres above sea level. This became even clearer when later in my ride I kept climbing out of the valleys and discovering more wide open farming land at the top instead of the peaks of hills I had expected. But the depth of the valleys makes them like another place. The houses are built of stone not brick, the sides are heavily wooded and the villages are just cute as anything, especially as spring blossom was just appearing.

The exception to the cuteness was the valley of the Meuse which forms the boundary of this new area. Initially I dropped very fast and steeply down a lovely side valley alongside a stream, passing mills and cottages in dark stone which reminded immediately of the English Peak District.

At the end it was almost a shock to burst out onto the side of the Meuse. This is a big river, one of the workhorses of Europe and it suffers from its heritage as an industrial canal with big cement works, railways, boat moorings, main roads and a railway line all exploiting its history as transport corridor, especially on the northern bank where the main towns in this section are. The south bank looked a lot pleasanter thank goodness..

I only rode a few kilometres along the only busy road of my day until I could get to the first bridge and across into the quiet countryside again. However I had noticed on the maps that there is a Meuse cycle route and when I rode over the bridge at I could see a flat riverside path winding away into the distance which clearly was the sort of long distance car free route that crosses Europe by the great rivers. So even a third sort of cycle touring was on offer had I wanted just to nip along the river to Huy on flat car free trails.

But I had come for the Ardennes, or at least the edge of the Ardennes, so I had planned a further30km route south of the Meuse and the route of Fleche Wallonne, circling round and come back to Huy from the south, arriving at the top of the Muy de Huy with about 100km under my wheels. I had expected constant climbing and descending but the reality was quite different.

As with the earlier section of the ride I was quickly into a network of minor roads with hardly any traffic on them. South from Namèche I was able to wind my way gradually up a lovely valley past Faulx les Tombes for several kilometres.

Cycle touring Belgium

I didn’t gain much height but then I turned east and climbed fairly vigorously up Gesves which it turns out is very much a plateau town, looking across high open farmland. I was getting pretty tired at this point and as I was at the top of one of my main climbs of the day I really rather hoped for a nice sweeping decent.

In fact I then had another flattish ride of about 15km northeast on plateau landscape, not what I had expected at all. However I was rewarded when I approached Modave because there was a great decent down and I made my first encounter with the Fleche Wallonne route. A relatively short steep climb out the other side took me back onto the plateau and I was finally working my way in towards Huy. Once again it was deceptive, I appeared to be riding towards a village on a low hill above the farmland. When I encountered the race publicity caravan just south of Huy it seems impossible to imagine they had just come up one of the most famous climbs in cycle racing.

Only when I got to the very top of Mur de Huy could I see that the road effectively “fell off a cliff” falling steeply down through the suburbs and then at the bottom the town is a bustling place by the Meuse. You can get a good impression of the Mur de Huy from here just by looking up at the hill behind the town.

The distinction between the plateau and the valleys is so contrasting it is almost like two worlds, even the architecture and the building materials are different between high and low, as are the farming patterns and woodlands.

Those low traffic volumes, driver respect and contrasting terrains should make Wallonia one of cycle touring’s undiscovered gems instead of something just for the Belgians and a few bike race fans. Maybe it suffers from the fact that it does offer “a bit of everything” because someone describing just one part of my ride on this sunny spring day would had told a completely different story to the next person. The downside is certainly that it isn’t easy to navigate, the theoretical Randonnee á Velo shown on some of my maps have no signposting whatsoever so you need to be confident with a map and reasonably well organised to decide if you wanted to stick to a hilly scenic ride or a meander through the lanes. And the Belgians have an extremely relaxed attitude to what constitutes a road for cyclists, in some cases we are talking almost cart track. However that is always preferable to a kilometre of cobbles, that really does knock back your energy and your speed, however it is so much part of the infrastructure there is just no way of knowing until you get there what you are going to be offered. Cycle lanes are almost redundant except by the main roads but they were generally reasonable quality and occasionally real gems.

All in all a brilliant day’s exploration, topped off with beer, frites and bike racing. It doesn’t get much better than that does it? Do come a visit Wallonia, there is something for every sort of cyclist here, even if it is upside down.

@30daysofbiking – how was it for you?

Posted on May 9, 2013 by kevinmayne

I last posted on 30 days of biking back on the 14^th of April.

That doesn’t mean I stopped riding, it just means I ran out of steam on the blogging. It’s a great concept and it probably lends itself to the 140 characters of Twitter but I assumed my readers will probably run out of patience if I write “went to the station again” for the 15^th time in a month. And it’s not as if I haven’t ridden a bike almost every day since too.

The bigger problem however was that I completely ran out of time to blog, I have had some pretty good content but I haven’t had time to do it justice. So while I am catching up with those posts I have looked back at the second half of the month and pulled out just a few highlights to close out the sequence, even if it is late. Almere and Paris were the travel highlights, but I have already blogged about those.

What was really great was being forced to note as I went along why even daily cycling is so uplifting, especially when you live out in the countryside and spring brings changes almost every day. This has been especially true this year, the late cold winter has compressed spring into a ferocious burst of energy and all of that broke during the 30 days of April.

So glory number one from the end of the month is blossom, bursting out all over.

And number two is the rediscovery of touring. At last the weather has been good enough to do proper touring rides and I managed three or four of those, both local explorations, another club ride with Cyclottignies and my big trip across Wallonia. I ended April a lot fitter than I started it!

Finally there was one other big beneficiary of my determination to ride every day. He is a lot fitter too. When I might have just nipped out for a walk instead Murphy got lots of great cross country rides even after work and we explored a some great new local lanes off the Lasne Nature maps although not without a few barriers.

Anyway I managed to ride every day except one in April, probably more than I would have done without the incentive of the challenge. So Murphy and I thank the 30daysofbiking guys in Minneapolis, great idea. We’ll be back next year.

To see how the rest of the world fared click here

Martians attack and wipe out cycling population of Netherlands town

Posted on April 29, 2013 by kevinmayne

I am assured by ECF board member Frans who delivered a Brompton by trailor to Almere station for me to use today that things are “quiet” because the whole of the Netherlands is on holiday or celebrating to welcome the coronation of the new King.

But it is all a bit scary – I even saw empty cycle parking at a station.

Do not despair gentle reader - here is what we expect – Dutch people being exceptionally normal on bikes on fantastic infrastructure. Enjoy.

30 days of biking: days 8-13 @30daysofbiking (with added @1dayalmostbiking)

Posted on April 14, 2013 by kevinmayne

Failed the challenge, but a really pretty dreadful start to the cycling week did get better and better.

Day 10 consisted of an hour of pretty unsuccessful bike fixing in the morning and much more disastrous hour sitting in an immobile car in the evening. Time when I should have been riding. So @30daysofbiking is going to be @29daysofbiking even if I have many days when there has been more than ride. Do you think the hour spent working on the bikes counts? I did sit on one and wiggle the handlebars?

Broken crank

For the state of dignity I will continue to the month end – here is the rest of this week’s diary which did have an excellent end. Day 7 was already covered – not the best start here

Day 8 – the “ouch that could have hurt” ride.

Snapped crank as I left the station. One of those incidents which could have pitched me onto the ground, but it was only a wobble.

Forced to catch a ride home. 10 minutes.

Day 9 “Who ploughed up the path” ride

Out for an hour on the mountain bike with the dog, only to discover that one of our local farmers has ploughed up the path I chose creating a surface almost unrideably lumpy and I fell off once. Murphy liked it, with his 4 wheel drive he was looking back and laughing.

60 minutes.

Day 10 – bummer. “Sit on saddle in shed” not ride

10 seconds?

Day 11. “Forgot my saddle cover” wet bum ride,

This isn’t a good week. Just from the station 25 minutes.

Day 12. “Paris – oh Paris”

Thank goodness, I needed a lift. See the full post here

Day 13. “The eccentrics of Ceroux” ride

Today I had two rides. I spent an hour with my wife and the dog gently taking in our local lanes. We went over to the village of Ceroux which I have photographed several times before.

However this time because we were going slower we noticed a street of houses that seem to be eccentrics corner. A giant stainless steel windmill that seemed to be made out of car wing mirrors, a dragon chimney pot and close proximity social housing for birds.

After we got back I gave myself a special treat and got out my new road bike for a thrash on dry, clean roads. I have hardly ridden it since I was given it as a leaving present by my colleagues at CTC, now I really was able to enjoy it. No photos, sorry – too busy enjoying myself.

It is a Genesis Equilibrium compact road by the way, steel all the way.

150 minutes and a great way to end the week.

When I join 100,000 Parisians on a Velib I do not despair for the future of the human race

Gallery

Posted on April 12, 2013 by kevinmayne

This gallery contains 13 photos.

Time to join the French revolution and get a proper taste of Europe’s biggest bike sharing scheme. 100,000 bike trips will have been made today by Velib, and one of them was mine. I was on a work trip to … Continue reading →

Cycle touring in the Flemish Ardennes, home of the Tour of Flanders

Posted on April 4, 2013 by kevinmayne

One can have too much of a good thing so I’ll stop banging on about the Tour of Flanders after today. I promise to post something about daily cycling and the “30 rides in April” Challenge at the end of the week, but be warned that I am hoping to go for a complete fix of race watching in the next few weeks with visits to Paris Roubaix, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

What I am really looking forward to alongside the race experiences is an excuse to cycle in parts of Belgium and northern France a bit further than I can reach on day rides from Lasne and perhaps a bit off normal tourist routes.

Actually I have to confess that I don’t know what a normal tourist route is in Belgium. Ever since I got here I have felt horribly unprepared to become a Belgian resident because I knew so little about the country. I know I am not alone because so many people I have spoken to had experienced holidays or business trips to the more celebrated European countries or tourism areas such as France, Spain and Italy or they have visited popular capital cities such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Those that have been to Belgium mostly visited Brussels or Bruges in search of beer or a statue of a peeing boy and experience almost nothing outside the cities.

As cyclists we experience countries in a different and more intimate way than other visitors. This may be seeing cities above the dark tunnels of metros and free from the congestion of surface transport or seeking out the most rural routes and tiny villages away from the hot spots. Wherever I have lived I even find myself driving non-cycling visitors round the routes I have cycled because I feel I can explain them better and I know where I have stopped, looked and felt the terrain.

So I feel embarrassed that I knew nothing of what Belgium had to offer the visitor or the touring cyclist just a few months ago and my learning curve is enormously steep. Cycling really helps however and this weekend was typical of that sensation. The only images I had of riding in Belgium before I moved here came from those classic races on television but I could not put them in to context without riding the area a bit and tasting the countryside. I know my local area better now but I should know more.

The area where the Tour of Flanders finishes is known as “The Flemish Ardennes”, presumably because it is the lumpy bit of Flanders which is generally the flatter part of Belgium. I am sure the naming has nothing to do with the first rule of Belgian politics which is “if they have we one, we want one” in the battles between the Dutch and French speaking communities. So if the higher hills of Wallonia get more widely recognised as the Ardennes then the Flemish need to steal a bit of the branding too? Of course not, cynical me.

However it was a really nice place to ride a bike. We started our ride from the neat market town of Frasnes, just over the border in French speaking Wallonia and set off north to ride across a range of hills to Ronse, one of the towns on the Ronde route. Then we had been pre-warned that we would have a hard climb out of Ronse to get up to the route of De Ronde.

The most important thing to say was that the countryside was absolutely deserted. It may have been Easter Sunday, freezing cold and the cycling was on but I can rarely remember a ride with so little traffic. It was absolutely great to drift through small hamlets and farmsteads feeling we were the only people around. And once we started climbing up through the small forests the world was silent except for the gusty breeze in the trees.

Even when we dropped into Ronse it was hard to imagine that this was a town about to experience one of the world’s major sporting events this weekend, the town was like a ghost town. It would have been hard to improve on those first 12 km but actually we did.

First we had to find our way out of town without getting blocked by the race. Vincent had plotted me a route that bisected the various loops of the race perfectly. It was also great to see that the route was part of a permanent Ronde Van Vlaanderen route, obviously a tribute to the race.

Firstly a chance to channel your inner Cancellara by climbing the Kappellestraat out of town, up a steep climb through the houses and out onto a high wooded ridge where we wound our way through some beautiful houses and gardens overlooking the town. Steep though, as you can probably see from Geoff’s grimace!

At the top we were able to cross the course of the race and then set off into a network of narrow lanes. My confidence was boosted by a sign that said this was the Eddie Merckx cycle route but other than that it seemed to be another deserted road.

Just a kilometre down the road we reached a crossroads which produced further surprise because Vincent’s recommended route took us down a dirt track which wound past a farm and then up a draggy climb. It all seemed as if we might be going down a completely wrong direction but the views from the top were great.

After that we switched around what seemed to be a few cars parked in country lanes and suddenly emerged at the top of the Paterberg.

If I combine the routes we rode with the all the possibilities shown by the route of the race it is pretty clear that this will be a superb place to ride a bike for the occasional touring ride and cycle tour too. Strongly recommended by our guide Vincent was the Route do Collines which looks as if it will be a fantastic ride.

I quite fancy the idea of the some of the sportives that criss-cross the area too. Ultimately I really hope one day I might be fit enough again to take on the Tour of Flanders Sportive itself but that is a whole different story.

Cycle touring in Belgium – clearly one of Europe’s undiscovered secrets.

“I do not despair” experiences the Tour of Flanders (1 – racing and riders)

Posted on April 2, 2013 by kevinmayne

I am still buzzing from my visit to De Ronde Van Vlaanderen on Sunday, it was a top day out.

And many thanks to my followers and tweeters who loved the photo of Cancellara attacking Sagan on the Paterberg. Key moments in cycling can be spread out over hundreds of kilometres, that’s why it is sometimes a better sport on TV than live but now I have watched the TV highlights a number of times I realise even more what a privilege it was to be there at just the moment when the race was won.

For the full “I do not despair” experience I have selected three blog subjects that summarise my memories of my first Ronde Van Vlaanderen.

The race itself. It really was top drawer single day classic racing with the top guys going mano a mano, no negative racing here.
The location. A big shout out to Vincent Meershaert, cycling fan and transport consultant from Ghent whose advice on where to go and how to get there was spot on. The Paterberg was not only the key climb it was a perfect setting for watching and it attracted a boisterous crowd who brought the authentic atmosphere of Flemish cycling.
Riding through the Flemish Ardennes. We chose to park and ride a round trip of about 40km through the countryside to get to the race. Thanks to guidance from Vincent we had a stunning ride on almost deserted roads which only added to the occasion.

Post 1: The race.

I really worried that we might be stuck on a hillside without a sense of the race unfurling, getting just fleeting glimpses of a peloton of riders until a final thrash up the Paterberg and then they would go away and we would only find out the result later that night.

Not a chance. A big screen was visible most of the way up the hill which combined with the chatter of the fans in multiple languages and regular updates on Twitter meant that we were in touch the action the whole time. Plus the position of the Paterberg at the centre of the closing circuits of the race meant that there were circulating helicopters alerting us to the approach and location of the riders throughout the final two hours of riding.

And the Peterberg itself gave fantastic views of the riders snaking down from the Oude Kwaremont at high speed before they hit the bottom of the vicious cobbled climb where the riders funnelled so close to us you could smell the pain. Oh the indignity, some of the hardest riders in world cycling grovelling up among the cars.

Breakaway group

So here is a small gallery of my favourite racing shots as the race unfurled.

186km gone and the break of the day sweeps down from the Oude Kwaremont and then battling up the Paterberg, great team effort by Lotto, especially big Andre Greipel who certainly isn’t built for this. In this picture you can see not only

Breakaway group

the group from the front but the camera tracking them on screen.

And then the peloton, carefully controlled by the strong teams but not yet flat out on the climb, Welsh rider Geraint Thomas well to the fore and looking settled.

Only when enlarging a photo did I notice that Cancellara and Sagan were already inseparable, the wise old head keeping an eye on the younger man.

219km, second time up and the pressure was on, the much smaller bunch was straining and there were a lot more riders down in the team cars. Thomas had crashed and despite flying up the climb he was already being baulked by cars and backmarkers, his game was up.

Finally we saw the race unfold on the big screen as Cancellara hit the afterburners on the Oude Kwaremont and only Sagan could hold him. They caught Jurgen Roelandts and then we watched the trio fly down the valley below us and then heard the noise erupt along the roadside. 243km and just 13 km to go, this had to be the moment and everybody knew it.

From my viewpoint I suddenly saw Sagan come in to sight on the far side of the road and knew I had a great photo. I didn’t know just how great until Cancellara burst in front of me absolutely flying, just in time to click. I didn’t dare study the picture until the evening, I had the sense it might be special, especially because we then saw him ride away to the win from that point.

Meanwhile our vantage point gave some great views of the following pack, straining their every sinew to form a chasing group. Not many sports let you get this close to the best. This selection includes Alexander Kristoff, eventual 4th with Johann Vansummeren 20th, Marcus Burkhardt 22nd and Geraint Thomas who lost 2:49 to finish 41st. At the top of the page are Lars Boom, Flecha and Jerome.

Everybody moved down the hill to watch the finale on the big screen where a burst of sporting applause from the Belgians and cheering from the Swiss accompanied the pictures of Cancellara crossing the line.

They don’t call the great races “The monuments” for nothing, and this was a classic worth of the name.

I Do Not Despair

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

Category Archives: Travel