This gallery contains 21 photos.
I have just received my links to the official photography provided by the organisers of the Tour of Flanders Cyclo on Saturday. As well as individual rider photos they also throw in a nice collection of atmosphere shots which show … Continue reading
My aim with this blog is to keep a balance. A wide variety of cycling content mixed in with some travel, food and Belgian life.
On the cycling side it means that I try to balance my personal love of for sporty riding like great races and mountain biking with rides for everyone in amazing locations and great company.
However regular readers may have noticed a trend creeping in over the past few months. Since December I have been doing a lot of long hard rides. Thankfully you have all been very appreciative of the long touring days, the hard cross country and recently the excursion to Taiwan’s mountains.
I am having a MAMIL moment. I am a Middle Aged Man in Lycra, racing around the countryside in search of cycling achievement.
Here is my confession.
I ended last summer feeling good about my riding and I was determined to keep it up over the winter for the first time since moving to Belgium. The idea became firmer when I found our club’s previously secret winter riding gang that would get me out on Sunday mornings, just like back in the UK.
However that innocent aim got hi-jacked by a moment of MAMIL madness. I was clicking around the web one evening when I found the site for the Tour of Flanders challenge ride on the Saturday before the legendary classic. The race I have been visiting since I got here, only growing in my estimation now I live in Belgium.
Click, enter your details. 130 kilometres, all the famous climbs, I can do that, click. Enter credit card, click. (I would like to blame mixing Belgian beer with a double espresso, or similar over-stimulation, but I suspect I just had a moment.) And with that I went off to bed dreaming of becoming a Flandrian.
A couple of days later I made my true confession. “Well I may have just sort of….” and “I was just thinking maybe I could ride an event Easter weekend.” “The Tour of Flanders Cyclo….”
Once again Mrs Idonotdespair showed the insight into my behaviour that kept our marriage happy for twenty five years. She cut straight through my woffle, gave me a withering look and said “Oh no, you are going to start training aren’t you?”
I promised that it wasn’t the case. No obsessive behaviour. No doubling the food bill. No sneaky rides at inappropriate moments. Because I had no doubt I would not be training for this ride. I would try to “get fit”, but in my head that is a process of just a few longer fun rides on top of my usual schedule.
Training is what you do when you become slave to an objective. Faster, higher, stronger. To beat a time or a rival. No I am not going to be training, I am just going for a long ride.
Reality bites.
About a week after I signed up for the Tour of Flanders ride I began my schedule by setting set out for a thrash up a few hills on Saturday morning. This did not go well at all and I promptly came down with flu and then a chest infection which lasted almost through to Christmas. Best winter in years? No chance.
So I did the only realistic thing in the circumstances. I panicked.
Well almost. I had 13 weeks to create the man in my head who was bouncing up steep cobbled hills with enthusiasm and energy, not somebody crawling to the line in pain and suffering. Yes the Tour of Flanders classic allows for fun riders who can take up to 12 hours to do just 70km, something I can handle even when totally unfit. But that’s not the point for me, I want it to feel sporty, I want to be able to follow bunches of other riders, I want to be able to look at it on the TV the next day when the pros ride and I want to be able to say “I did that”.
It has however been really hard, especially in my head. It is five years since I last got myself anywhere near this level of fitness, in fact probably nearer ten. The body forgets. I have ached, I have groaned, I have been wet and cold rather more times than I wanted. I was much more tired than I had expected as I stepped up the riding/training.
Riding with the club’s winter group I found myself struggling unexpectedly to keep up. People I rode with all last year were dropping me on Sundays. I blamed my old winter bikes and the fact that I was riding 3 or 4 days in the week to so I was more tired than them, but if you had asked me at the end of February “How’s it going?” I really was not happy. And perhaps that’s my main point, the stress of the target took a lot of the shine off the riding, it was something I “had to do”, not “wanted to do”.
I think I might have been training. Oh dear!
Rewards.
March arrived.
The mornings offered a hint of spring.
I extracted my best bike from its winter hibernation and enjoyed the swish of lightweight tyres on dry roads.
My strategy for surviving the annual diet of jetlag, late dinners and over-consumption at the Taipei Cycle Show paid off brilliantly with the two extra days for cycling acting as a wonderful final warm weather training camp.
And then I went out on a Sunday and whizzed round with our fast group, something I could not possibly have done a year ago. And as I started enjoying myself the aches and pains eased away. I am about 4kg lighter than I was in October and a hell of a lot fitter, I really can enjoy this.
Maybe, just maybe I am ready for my MAMIL moment on Saturday.
Lessons learned.
I have no enthusiasm whatsoever to turn training for cycling into a way of life again. I intend to keep my rides nicely balanced with a return to regular city and gentle touring rides.
All credit to the veteran racers and born again MAMILs that bring so much energy and passion to their cycling. Yes I am going to try and keep fairly fit. I can see some great rides coming up over the rest of the year and as I am in Belgium I will stretch out for some more links to the classics.
But I am going to keep it fun. If the wind is howling and the rain coming down horizontally like it was this morning, I will roll over, take an extra hour and go for the train later.
Probably.
Today I leave for what is now the fourth of my annual trips to Taiwan for the Taipei Cycle Show. Added attractions this year are the Asian Cycling Forum, a big step on the road to our Velo-city 2016 Conference in Taipei and a very special weekend cycling with the wonderful Formosa Lohas Cycling Association team who are going to take me out for a couple of long days in the centre of the island.
It may be the rainy (drizzly?) season but it will be warm and muggy compared to Belgium.
However before I leave I had some personal errands to do so I decided to do them by bike early this morning and then cycle hard for an hour so my body is nicely jaded and I might just sleep on the plane tonight, a process that never comes easily to me.
This was a sharp but wonderful contrast to what I am expecting in Taipei. As I left the house there was a very sharp frost and the first 70 metre drop to the valley below left me gasping in shock. But the place was bathed in sharp morning light which began to warm everything with a golden glow. An hour later as I rode through the woods I felt this was going to be the perfect day to spend the whole day riding,
I just wanted to set off on a huge adventure on my two wheeled companion and “not come back till tea-time” as we might have said in a children’s book. What a waste to be stuck in a metal tube for hours.
Taipei will be wonderful again, stand by for lots of blogging. But I have unfinished business with these spring mornings in Belgium.
This gallery contains 18 photos.
Belgian cycling delivered another wonderful day’s riding last week. I went south to the hills and valleys around Namur to ride a mountain bike event called VTT de Malonne that showcased some of the best of the landscape, countryside and historic … Continue reading
Suddenly I feel the seasons may have changed. I feel uplifted. Recharged.
It’s not like it never happened before. It will happen all over the Northern Hemisphere in the coming weeks. But I am having my relationship with the countryside refreshed, personally and privately, deep in the Belgian woods.
I “cycle to work” every day. That can either be a ten minute ride to the local station or what we really call the “ride to work”, 25km across the rolling valleys that criss-cross the countryside to the south of Brussels, of which at least 45 minutes is spent on peaceful forest tracks through the Forêt de Soignes/ Zoniënwoud before the bustle of the Brussels rush hour.
This year I am trying very hard to get a bit fitter over the winter (for reasons which will become clear in a few weeks) which has meant I have ridden the longer distance many more times than usual. It has been a long, hard winter in the woods. The dark forced me to stick to one simple route where I know every bump and hollow but I still feel like I have been squinting into the dark trying to avoid holes and fallen branches forever, it has been hard to relax and roll.
Two weeks ago I went off to Munich for several days which was an even colder experience, but enjoyable none the less.
When I came back to Belgium it was like a switch had been turned. It was only a week away but things had changed. Suddenly and unexpectedly the light had just crept though the magical time shift where the whole of my forest ride was in daylight. Maybe only a soft dawn light as I enter the woods but enough to see without the lights, to relax and pedal without nasty surprises in the dark.
Secondly we had a week where the morning temperatures rose quickly above freezing. They may have dropped again this week, but that one week was enough. No green shoots have come through the carpet of golden beech leaves left from the autumn, but nature got the message. From the sombre silence of winter the birds have just burst in to life.
Over the winter my only accompaniment has been the owls. The area is alive with what we call tawny owls in English, the source of the classic owl sound as the males “tu-whit” and the females “tu-whoo” in reply, a seamless exchange that comes across as a single call.
Now it is the turn of the day birds to rediscover their energy. Blackbirds, robins and all the woodland birds are bursting with song, a true dawn chorus. Every valley seems to have a woodpecker hammering energetically at the mighty beech trees that line the paths. The owls have been replaced by the top predator of the daylight as buzzards can be heard mewing as they circle above the tree tops.
The absolute beauty of it is that the days have been still, cold and crisp. Despite the fact that I cannot see them I can hear every note, every peck.
As if in response to their enthusiasm I feel uplifted myself. The ride has been transformed from a trudge to a pleasure. Instead of wanting to get it over and done with I find myself adding 10, 20 even 30 minutes to my route by adding extra loops deep into the woods.
Alone, except for the birds and the deer.
Because the deer will be my other constant companions for the coming months. While I ride around dawn they are bold and foraging close to the paths. I know they have been there too in the dark as I occasionally hear them bouncing away over the dry rustling leaves, but I never see them. Nobody else comes this way at this time so they have not been scared away from the paths and the silent approach of the bike doesn’t seem to alert them until I am quite close. So now in the mists of dawn we carefully watch each other from a comfortable distance.
The first weeks of a new season and I am bursting with life too. The transformational impact of a simple bike ride. Like the birds and animals I know it’s going to be a great spring, because I can feel it.
Part 2 of my guest post for Denzil Walton’s www.discoveringbelgium.com has been published today.
Last week it was all about places for you to ride.
This week its “Watching cycling with the Belgians – beer, frites and the most passionate fans in the world”
I have suggested some of the best cycling to watch this year including the Six Days of Ghent, the great settings for cyclocross races and of course the road classics.
An extra bonus for 2015 is the Tour de France which comes to Wallonia in July.
For links to my own accounts of visiting the various races mentioned click the tabs at the bottom of the page.
Thanks again Denzil for the opportunity to spread the word and for the great ideas on your blog.
This is quite fun, Late last year I was invited to contribute a guest post on cycling for the blog www.discoveringbelgium.com and the forst part has been published today.
Denzil Walton is a freelance wrote and author of some good books of walks in the towns around the Brussels area. He has an excellent blog which has a diverse range of Belgian content from walking to crafts, history and countryside.
He asked me for some ideas on cycling content and I suggested that I quite liked the idea of a New Year piece with some of the cycling things I want to do and see in 2015.
I suspect some of my Belgian cycling friends will rush to tell me about dozens of great rides that I missed, but this was written with a bit of a visitor’s perspective. There will be room for lots more stories on this blog – maybe you just need to invite me for more bike rides.
Wednesday’s bike ride was enjoyable enough because of the cycling.
But there was one other feature that made the day memorable, not least because it came upon me completely by surprise and gave me unprecedented access to a Belgian transport landmark.
I was cycling along the Charleroi-Brussels Canal that makes up Ravel 1, one of the longest off-road cycle routes in Belgium. It was deserted and a thick mist had come down so there was a sense of riding along a narrow closed corridor.
I got my first surprise when I realised I had started cycling out onto a huge viaduct with the ground disappearing away to the mist on my side. As someone who sometimes suffers from vertigo this was more than a little un-nerving but the infrastructure was big and wide so I was quite relaxed.
Then out of the mist came the shape of a lock gate so I cycled up to the edge for a look, but the view made me stop in amazement. There was no lock gate. In fact there was not even a canal. Below me there was a something resembling a huge railway yard sloping into the distance, with not a drop of water in sight.
Then I realised that projecting down the hill was a boat sitting in a massive tank of water. The tank was on wheels and it was waiting to descend the slope.
I had stumbled onto The Ronquières Inclined Plane, a boat lift that can carry up to 5600 tonnes of water and boats between the two levels of the canal almost 70 metres apart in height. It is a notable local landmark and visitor attraction but I hadn’t paid enough attention to the maps to realise that it was on this section. Taking 8 years to build in 1968 it replaced 18 lock gates and is still the largest boat lift of its kind in the world.
After a few minutes taking in the view of the long slope disappearing in to the mist I rolled my bike down only obvious route out, a steep ramp down the side of the structure. To my amazement I popped out almost under the giant tin bath carrying the boat, right beside the huge cables that pulled and lowered them down the ramp.
It was canal infrastructure on an enormous scale, made all the more impressive by realising the weight of water that was above me. I was having a close encounter with one impressive piece of engineering.
I was a little surprised to discover the cycle route ran right down by the works but I enjoyed the descent, it was amazing.
I now know that it is over 1400 metres long, which is why I could hardly see the end in the mist. However there was a shock at the bottom when I found it came to a complete dead end against a huge wall and some locked gates. Ooops, I had the dawning feeling I was not meant to be there and I had come into a part of the works that was really not for visitors. And now I had to climb back up the 1400 metres of steep incline, although it did give me a spectacular and imposing sight view of 5000 tonnes of boat and water creeping down from above me.
I puffed my way almost back to the top when I noticed a side gate where I was pleased to throw my bike over the top and get out on to a service road and back to ground level. From there I was able to ride round the sides of the embankment and reappear at the bottom and look back up to the top shrouded in mist once again, only this time from the right side of the fences. And in all that time I never saw a human being and I was never challenged by a security guard or anything. A remarkably laid arrangement that gave me a privileged access.
In the summer it is possible to ride a cruise boat up and down the lifts and to go into a panoramic tower that looks down over the spectacular works and the surrounding countryside but I rather enjoyed the way this monster came to me out of the winter mist. I may not have had a railway set as a child, but I am a bit of a sucker for spectacular engineering and by chance I had a very special view of Le plan incliné de Ronquières.
Now I know it is there I may well go back, but I very much doubt I will get anywhere near the workings. As well as my dull and misty photos the incline has its own supporters association with some spectacular photos and a fuller history, I shall read up on it properly before I go next time!
This gallery contains 14 photos.
I promised myself at least one long touring ride over the Christmas break and yesterday was “the day”. It didn’t start out with a blog post in mind, but it turned into an interesting taste of Belgium’s long distance cycling … Continue reading
I don’t know what it is about this corner of Belgium but we just seem to have gorgeous mornings and particularly colourful sunrises.
Smiles inside….
I was thoroughly enjoying my icebreaker ride for the year. Nothing was stirring on the club message board and there was still a lot of ice and snow about so I set off for a solo ride using my mountain bike again.
It was a lovely day. Where the sunshine had reached the soil we had warming conditions with melting snow turning to mud while elsewhere the bitter cold was keeping a firm grip.
All was going nicely until my rear derailleur disintegrated 10km from home. That shouldn’t be a problem, I just shortened the chain to ride home on a single gear. Except that the chain splitter decided to snap too, leaving me without a working bike.
Some cursing may have taken place.
Then I ate humble pie and phoned home.
Maybe I have got my bad luck out of the way for the year already. Hope so.
I had been seeing tweets and news stories all day about the snow hitting Britain and Northern Europe.
In Yorkshire there were typical shots of closed roads up on the hills while the Dutch were being oh so smug about the clearing of snow from their bike lanes.
And here it rained, and it rained and it rained.
Until about 2pm when the rain turned to slush, then sleet and finally slow.
Of course I had to go out – its like a rule isn’t it. It may have been mainly slush on top of mud but it was beautiful. (Even if I did have to clean the signs)
This gallery contains 21 photos.
It is the weekend before Christmas and we are standing in a historic rock fortress overlooking a Belgian city. Fantastic views across the river Meuse, even on a bleak day. This is Namur, capital of Wallonia, the French speaking region … Continue reading
I have completed my hat-trick of watching Flemish cycling. First the cobbled classic one day races. Then the muddy delights of winter cyclocross. Now I have completed a long held ambition to go to the Ghent 6 day cycle race, possibly the most celebrated track race in the world.
Modern 6 day racing is six hours of cycle racing per day on an indoor banked velodrome where teams of two riders compete to cover the most distance in a series of team races and other events. In between the elite races there is an undercard of promising under 23 riders and top women track riders, each with their own series. It is a spectacle that combines fast and furious bike racing with a touch of professional wrestling. Music, lights, colourful costumes, man to man combat, speed and risk. In short, cycle racing as a variety act, but with real speed and strength too. Not surprising that it is loved by the Flemish, cycling’s most passionate fans.
British fans have been starved of a home 6 day cycle race since 1980 so a weekend in Ghent has become a favourite weekend break for many club riders over the last 30 years, although as Ghent has been the spiritual home of British and Irish riders breaking into the continental scene since the 1950s there has been a British cycling presence at the racing for many years longer.
Today this is a European spectacle that provides winter entertainment for cycling fans in traditional cycle racing countries but its origins are largely American. A few individual six day challenge races took place in the 1870s in Britain. But the breakthrough was in 1891 when six day races were started in Madison Square Gardens in New York and became a big money spectacle that stayed popular right through to the Second World War. These also started as individual challenges with riders competing round the clock for six days, reducing them to shells by the final days. They would stop and sleep as little as they could to maximise distance, but apparently it wasn’t much of a spectacle towards the end. Organisers then realised that two man teams would enable the riders to be competitive for a whole week and the six day format was adopted to avoid racing in Sundays.
Within this format the unique spectacle of tag racing with both team members on the track at the same time was devised. While one races the second rests for a few moments, then when they catch each other the speeding rider transfers his momentum to his team-mate by means of the handsling, one of the most distinctive manoeuvres in cycling. It is made all the more amazing because the riders do it with up to 30 riders on the track, at 70kmph with riders going in all directions. It is difficult to describe in writing, trying to portray a manoeuvre like a bunch sprint in a road race, but just as half the field is going forwards at full speed the other half are slamming on the brakes – and they almost never crash.
This racing format has been known in English as the Madison ever since, or the American in French.
The format with racing round the clock continued until the seventies with riders getting up to all sorts of antics while the crowds were not watching. It is sure that this was also a hot-bed of drug assisted riding because the riders were expected to perform to demand no matter how they felt.
In the late sixties a rebellious organiser called Ron Webb started running the London Six Day race on a new format with just afternoon and evening racing in an entertaining format. The other organisers said it wasn’t a proper six day race but the formula was popular with riders and the public so it stuck and today the few remaining “sixes” all use the same format.
And that’s what I wanted to introduce my son to, just as my dad took me down to the London sixes in the 1970s. We decided to take in the final day of the six and the special atmosphere of the track centre where the racing swirls around a boisterous crowd who were hitting the bars with enthusiasm.
It is an intimate scene, the crowd and the bars are pressed right up against the riders and support staff. The elite riders get tiny cabins to hide in, but the staff, women and under 23s are forced to do everything in public.
As Brits we were especially spoiled because not only were we there to take in the atmosphere this year we had some British talent to support. Early in the evening we saw young riders Matthew Gibson and Christopher Lawless won the Under 23 continuing a tradition that includes a certain Bradley Wiggins.
But the star turn for me was Mark Cavendish. He is super popular in Belgium, not just because he rides for Belgian team Omega Pharma Quickstep but also because he respects the traditions of the sport and rides in a way the Flandrians can respect. 
Having an elite road rider of his reputation riding their six day was a huge coup for the organisers, a throwback to the sixties when riders like Eddie Merckx mixed it with the track specialists. Cav was paired with his Flemish team-mate Iljo Keisse, hugely popular himself with the Ghent crowd for his five previous wins in the event.
Great news for us was that as we came into the final day four teams were still in contention including Cavendish and Keisse, but they were up against wily local experts Kenny de Ketele and Jasper de Buyst. De Ketele and De Buyst had a strong lead in the points competition, scores picked up throughout the week in the supporting competitions. That meant Cavendish and Keisse could only win overall if they finished a lap ahead of their rivals, a result that could only be achieved by lapping the whole field more times than their opponents during the Madison races.
So the scene was set, and the racing was brilliant. All four leading teams went at it hammer and tongs in the two madisons of the evening, reducing the other seven teams to supporting roles. We stood in the middle as they swirled around us in dizzying flashes of lycra and chrome, trying to keep track on move and counter move.
When they were not doing the madisons they were battling it out in the other staples of six day racing, formats designed to entertain. Sprint races were accompanied by rock music countdowns that saw the teams race off against the clock for the fastest times. Only six teams at a time were allowed up on the track for the legendary denys, racing behind motorcycles, a scene that needed no musical accompaniment because the motors roar to a crescendo when the final laps hit full speed.
My personal track favourite has always been the elimination race. But who gave it the boring name? When I started going to grass track races as a kid it was always the “Devil”, or officially “Devil take the hindmost”. Who couldn’t love a race with such a great name, each lap the last rider across the line is eliminated until just two are left rolling. It was always a crowd pleaser, especially if at last one of the riders decides to play the crowd pleasing role of hanging around the back and sneaking up on the rest just as they cross the line.
In the end Cavendish and Keisse battled almost to a standstill taking lap after lap but at the very end they were marked out by De Ketele and De Buyst who sneaked away for the win by the narrowest of margins.
What a great day’s entertainment, we thoroughly enjoyed it from start to end. Flemish cycling delivered once again, there really cannot be a better a better place to be a bike fan.
I Do Not Despair 