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
Not Team Sky – nuff said.
Not Sep Vanmarcke for second place. (Amazing ride by the way.)
Me. The closest I got to the Arenberg Trench was this.
Woke up this morning feeling terrible and certainly not safe to drive, let alone ride a bike. Instead of the lovely 50km ride through the countryside of Belgium and northern France on our first decent spring day I spent my time moping about.
This afternoon I felt slightly better and in honour of 30 days of biking I pottered round the lanes for 45 minutes. Feel rubbish now, probably not a good move.
Next year 😦
Day 7. This should cheer me up ride. 50 minutes.
A great idea from Minneapolis, now in its fourth year.
Pledge to ride every day in April and join thousands of others who have signed up to the same idea. Not too late to pledge for the rest of the month if you have missed it. http://30daysofbiking.com
I have a strong suspicion that many of my readers may not regard riding every day as the slightest bit challenging, but I have to say even an addict like me does have down days, not least in this year’s interminable European winter. But what the heck, why not. It might just become spring at some point.
The only slight problem bothering me is that the wonderful Mrs Do Not Despair reads at least some of my blog posts. Now she has probably worked out why I was prepared to take the dog out Wednesday evening even if it was awful. And when she reads this post the words “Don’t you do enough cycling already?” may just pass her lips.
I move quickly on.
1st April – shadow ride. Lovely late evening sunshine for me and the pooch. 30 minutes.
2nd April – station ride – pretty standard stuff but so nice to do it without much ice around. 25 minutes for out and back.
3rd April – The I really wouldn’t be doing this if I hadn’t made that stupid pledge ride.
Cold, bleak, horrible. 30 minutes of bashing round the tracks and the cobbles under the leaden skies of Lasne.
4th April – Station ride again – but where are they all?
Easter holidays seem to have emptied the roads and streets of the area.
5th April – The long commute ride. To Brussels through Foret de Soignes. First time since the clocks changed so the woods have reverted to dawn. Saw the family of deer again and listened to the bird life pretending it is spring. 80 minutes – I’m getting quicker.
6th April – Test a couple of bike adjustments ride to Limlette. Cold, but maybe there is a glimmer of sunshine. And the key question. “is it bad form to bring your own mud to Paris Roubaix?” 25 minutes riding, 15 minutes spannering.
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.
This is the second of my Tour of Flanders updates, this time focussing on the fan experience, what it was like to be by the roadside for this celebration of all things Flemish.
For my post on the race click here. The final post will be a little touring post about my first experience of riding through the Flemish Ardennes. (And next week we start again with Paris Roubaix!)
As I said yesterday a big thank you to Vincent Meershaert who told me The Paterberg was one of his favourite places to watch. I don’t know why but it really didn’t ring a bell with me beforehand, I knew about the Oude Kwaremont, the Koppenberg and the organiser’s controversial decision to leave the Mur de Grammont out of the route.
Only on final research did I discover that the Paterberg would be the key climb, the last before the finish. However as we approached the apparent spot my father and I cycled up to the hill on a tiny country lane and even when we were within the last few metres all we could see were a few cars parked on the edge of a field. I was really quite worried that I had got completely lost or that we had misunderstood the advice until we climbed over the ridge and suddenly looked down on a mass of people, barriers, flags, banners and tents sloping away down a steep hillside.
Then we understood why this spot would be the prefect vantage point in any bike race. The steep slopes formed a banked terrace with a chance to see the riders on the climb and as the road surface was not a sunken hollow so spectators could get right to the edge of the road on both sides all the way up and there were no embankments or hedgerows in the view. Pretty fierce hill, only 400 metres but 20% at the steepest point, averaging 13% and cobbled all the way.
In addition the hill also looked out across the countryside as the riders swept across our view along the valley descent to the foot of the Paterberg. Belgian TV obviously knew this too because one of their fixed cameras was halfway up the hill and we could see the strung out peloton on TV several times from this key vantage point.
However all those things are just the physical setting. What made this such fun was the party atmosphere up and down the hill. The audience may have been majority Flemish judging by the number of beery conversations we almost had in Dutch but there were a lot of other voices present too.
Boldest, most colourful and definitely the most excited were the Swiss-Italian Fabian Cancellara fan club who had staked out their corner with Swiss flags, banners and posters fighting for position with the black lion of Flanders. 
Beer and frites were in plentiful supply and I can vouch for the fact that the frites and mayo were excellent despite the prospect of a cold hilly ride putting me off the beer. It didn’t seem to put anyone else off though and as time wore on it certainly took its effect.
The other stars of the day were the residents. One house at the steepest point of the hill laid on novelty entertainment and music as two increasingly inebriated men in chicken suits managed to keep dancing for almost three hours.
And because the profile let fans get right up to the edge when the riders did come by it became funnel of sound, fans right up in the riders’ faces yelling and screaming. Maybe not all over the road like some Tour de France stages but because of the speed the riders flew up these shorter steep climbs it would have been a nightmare without the barriers. Even patting bums seemed to be in order here, but that could have been the effect of the beer.
A lot of very windswept happy customers left together at the end of the day to wend their way back to whichever field hid their car, bike or shuttle bus having shared the Ronde Van Vlaanderen experience.
Just a personal note to my Dad to close. Because you tipped Cancellara for the win doesn’t give you an automatic membership of the fan club. He does get carried away you know!
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.
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.
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
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.
Every sporty cyclist knows the importance of proper recuperation and diet after a ride. After a hard day watching De Ronde Van Vlaanderen it is vital for the full Belgian experience that we keep ourselves in shape.
Only one shop in town is open, but it is the most important. Gorgeous.
If I never take another cycle racing photo again I will be happy.
The Paterberg, Tour of Flanders. The final climb where Fabian Cancellara attacks Peter Sagan to break away and win the race.
At the very second I pressed the shutter.
The only thing the camera cannot show is the relative speeds. Look in Sagan’s face – he knows.
A full report on a brilliant day out to follow, but I just had to share.
Almost prepared for the highlight of my Belgian cycling life so far. We are off to join the crowds at The Tour of Flanders, De Ronde Van Vlaanderen – one of the greatest of cycling days. Time to pick a winner from Sagan, Cancellara and Boonen like all the other armchair pundits before we set off to see them on the Paterberg, our vantage point of choice.
My father arrived off the Eurostar on Wednesday and since then we have been preparing hard.
We have ridden some cobbles and hills, we have watched some TV and we have studied the appropriate training materials.
We have even done some special hill climb training. (256 steps of the Lion Monument at Waterloo battlefield to be precise – special low gear effort that one)
But most important of all we have talked cycling for three days solid. I mean after all, we aren’t riding, we are just going to watch!
These diminutive machines are quite common on the streets of Taipei. I never actually saw one with the extra passenger on the back but I saw a few with a child in the front seat, unfortunately never when I had a camera to hand.
I can think of reasons why this might not pass any number of EU regulations, but is a perfect solution for a family in a small apartment.
This post rounds up some of my experiences from a week in Taipei and it gives me the chance to bring together the thoughts of people I met and my own observations. I wrote about this a bit last year but this time there are three key differences.
Most importantly I rode a bike myself – the basis for the “Not despairing in…” series of posts on this blog. I also know that the experience of combining walking, writing and talking to activists in 12 countries in 12 months has improved my cycling observation. It is much like when I used to benchmark factories in my previous career, if you do it often enough you develop a more finely tuned sense about what is happening and you have much better references to use for judgements. The third element is that I got to do a lot more talking to people in the cycling industry and advocacy this time which gave my views better balance, on my first visit I was almost a tourist by comparison.
I was formally in Taiwan to attend the Taipei Cycle Show and to speak at the International Bicycle Design Forum which gave itself the title “Forging Taiwan to be a Bicycling Island”. (News report here.)
After hearing the words from the conference and having my discussions with the cycling community my personal observations reinforce what the cycling world here is saying. The underlying commitment to cycling here is huge. It already had a massively successful and world leading bike industry which has been strategically planned as a key national economic interest for years.
However this was largely built on the back of a static or declining local cycling market.
The first stage of trying to address that has been largely leisure and tourism focussed. This approach that would be widely recognised in the English speaking world – something you do in your sporty clothes at the weekend or in your spare time.
This has been improving vigorously with the influence of the industry and the support of academics in tourism and economic development like Associate Professor Hsin-Wen Chang who is working in association with eight counties on their cycle tourism product.
I really must try to get out and try some of their rural routes another time because Lonely Planet and CNN have listed Taiwanese experiences in their top ten in the world and I saw some stunning pictures. Cycle tourism holidays are growing and there are lots of “round the island” promotions and charity rides which are being used to try and build cycling lifestyles. I sampled this ambition 
just by trying some of the extensive and well-engineered riverside cycle tracks in Taipei which now reach over 100km virtually traffic free. I was really delighted to be invited on the “Social ride” promoted by the local staff and friends of Korean folding bike specialists Tern who took a big group of us along the paths after dark. That was great fun as social rides usually are and it was complemented by the fact that the routes through the parks and the river bridges are brilliantly well lit at night.
So leisure is going in the right direction. That leaves transport.
The relative affluence and successful economy of Taiwan means that they have high levels of car use and recent massive investment in motorways and road capacity sitting alongside successful high speed rail and a mass rapid transit (MRT) in Taipei.
Most of the writes and bloggers online agree with the people I met. (Example here by Carlton Reid) Transport cycling in Taipei has been neglected, there is a lack of cycling infrastructure except cycling on the pavements and there is almost universal concern about the swarming buzzing scooters anywhere on the island. They are about 30% of traffic in Taipei, a huge proportion. The main perceived threat to cyclists is that they fly around in swarms at what seem very high speeds, all across the roads and swerving around the cars, a combined deterrence of speed and noise. The cars themselves are very scooter aware but that doesn’t stop the average driver from getting the foot to the floor on all the roads around the city, and from what I could see out in Hsin Chu and Taoyuan they are just as fast.
And this is where the contradictions start.
These road conditions and driver speed easily put Taipei on a level with somewhere like Kiev as a really cycling unfriendly city. The Invisible Visible Man did an excellent recent post about his discovery of Staten Island in New York describing similar challenges and the lack of cyclists as a result.
Therefore I would expect to see almost no cyclists whatsoever on the roads and last year I didn’t. However this year I felt I saw more riders, perhaps because I was out a bit more in daylight but I think there is a change going on.
This was confirmed by King Liu, founder of Giant and his daughter Vicky Yang who is CEO of advocacy and promotional NGO the Cycling Lifestyle Foundation.
I can confidently say that if the driving conditions were like this in any European city I cannot imagine seeing any but the fiercest cyclists out on the streets, the fore-runners, the fixies, the messengers. However as I have already posted the
cyclists I kept seeing out on the highways were women of all ages, from the young and trendy to the “mature”. (here and here) Yes there were men but
as often as not they were often the ones on the pavements.This was an unexpected result and I think it hints that there is a supressed cycling culture just waiting to burst out. King Liu said that the ambitious Youbike bicycle rental scheme had recorded a record 25,000 trips on a single day the previous week, even before they had expanded the scheme from its current base of 2,000 bikes up to the expected 5,000. Vicky confirmed my observation that a big proportion of the users were young professional women who are seeing cycling and Youbike as a lifestyle choice.
Taipei has the space to copy New York and start taking space on the streets for segregated cycle lanes and I have no doubt that this is the big political choice now facing the city. They are putting in lanes on the pavements on some streets but I cannot imagine it will be enough if the demand really takes off and it is a political soft option, not a proper solution. I said as much in my presentation, highlighting the need for a proper joined up network that is accessible to all. The quality of the riverside routes shows that the engineering knowledge is there. Giant and the China Lifestyle Foundation are equally confident that Youbike is meeting a suppressed demand that will enable Taipei to follow Paris and London by getting cycling numbers up in the urban heart while the battles for urban space continue with the city authorities.
In my comments to the press I focussed on speed because I felt so uncomfortable with my own experience on the roads and because it is a “right now” opportunity which will complement Youbike. However in my speech to the Forum I emphasised that the city could and should see cycle lanes move from the pavements to the streets if the city and the country really wanted to forge a cycling island.
I think it will happen, cycling is too important to be neglected here and the right people are probably in position to make a difference. You can add the names of Tony Lo, Chief Executive of Giant and Robert Wu, Chairman of KMC to the mix of key players involved in the Forum. With that sort of influence from big companies working with the academics and advocates governments tend to listen. It won’t become the Netherlands overnight, no other country has even got close in forty years but there will be significant strides if they can get true political will.
I expect this will become an annual series of posts, I am quite excited about observing the changes, not least because the Taiwanese I met are such open and welcoming hosts who could talk cycling forever. What finer praise can there be for a nation?
Some personal highlights:
Riverside cycle paths by day and by night.
With thanks to Tern for the night ride and the very nice bike!
Photo Credit Tern
What I call a Grimshaw bridge. Any high quality cycling bridge I see anywhere around the world I subconsciously attribute to John for his passion about cycling bridges and design.
The cyclists of Taipei: their Youbikes and bikes
Wonderful Taiwanese hospitality today with the family of Hsin-wen Chang, head of the Bike-Friendly Environment Planning Studio project at Chung Hua University in Hsin Chu, about 100km from Taipei. She is not only a great enthusiast for cycling but a really welcome host – what more can one say!
First a tasting of Taiwanese tea with full ceremony and then an ever expanding meal at a favourite restaurant. Plenty of dishes I have never seen or tasted before washed down with more tea and rice wine.
A great way to relax after the intensity of the Taipei Cycle Show. More to come on tea, food and cycling in Taipei when I get back and sort all the photos and stories.
Great ride out with the folding bike company Tern last night.
Several photos to come when I have collated them, but I was delighted when the challenge of getting a third floor restaurant with 50 cyclists was solved in the only realistic way.
If only all shopping centres were so accommodating.
Brief update on the cycling in Taipei story.
Managed to hire a bike from one of the cycle hire stations which are positioned along the linear riverside parks which have some of the most impressive leisure cycling infrastructure I have seen. They run for miles right round the city.
But then I knew I was not going to be satisfied unless I actually rode in Taipei itself which meant passing through the flood defences and out into the terrifying kingdom of the scooters.
At this point I always believe what makes cycling possible in a new city is a role model.
And as I approached my first entry into bedlam a woman on a cargo trike pulled out slowly and sedately from a side street and instead of heading for the side of the road she boldly took up the whole lane of the busy highway.
“If she can, I can”
Another vote of thanks to the fearless cycling women of Taipei for your example.
More, lots more, to follow.
Very frustrating first couple of hours this morning failing to hire a bike.
Apparently to use the Taipei Youbike system I need either a Taiwanese credit card or mobile phone.
The bikes are plentiful, the weather is warm, there are cyclists about and I am hoping to cycle about rather than use the MRT every day. In fact this Youbike station was huge – and full of bikes!
Plan B is now in operation – one of the leisure bike hire stations by the river.
*The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
“Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”
I Do Not Despair 
