well, I'll start with this..
...bike racing is rooted in the Belgian, and particularly Flemish, character at a depth that no Italian sport can begin to approach. Watching a bike race in Flanders one can feel oneself entering the soul of a people..........
well, that did it for me. I bought my first road bike from Don Louis in Herne Hill. The Don spoke English, Italian and Flemish. The wheelmaker spoke Welsh and Flemish. Kelly spoke Flemish, and Tommy Simpson's first big victory was the Tour of Flanders. So....give me the heads of your children to ride on! And then...Belgium appeals to the anarchist in me. In what other country do the police go on strike and get sprayed with water cannon operated by the fire service? What other country fails to find itself a national government for a year?
Having said that, one can get down with the workers, Flemish or otherwise, any time one cares to, but Eurostar had a deal on first class tickets, so Susie and I fetched up at Saint Pancras, handed over our bikes and swanned up to the platform feeling pretty pleased with life, a pleasure undiminished by being told that we had an entire first class carriage to ourselves. As in royalty. Well, almost. A dynamic young business type entered, and confidently plugged in his 'laptop' computer...but, when the impossibly chic Eurostar stewards inspected his ticket, he was instructed to go to standard class 'at least three carriages from this one'. How we sneered!
We passed on the complimentary grand vins, but enjoyed the smoked chicken salad watching Kent flash by at three miles a minute, and polished off our dessert under a lowering Flemish sky. Our bikes were in the same carriage, so we collected them with a minimum of fuss and made our way to street level to find
a) rain
b) cobblestones
c) hippies
d) drivers on drugs
a) and b) make for a tricky ride, and so we walked to the Avenue de Stalingrad, and ever so carefully set off. I yelled 'so far, so good' to Susie, a half second before a car came straight at me on the wrong side of the road. So....we tiptoed (or the cycling equivalent) our way to the Grote Markt where, drawn by the magnetic powers of Martin's Thorn bicycle frame we found the others knocking back coffee in De Gulden Boot.
We were (magnicent) seven. Els (our Valiant Leader), her sister Chris, Martin, Baltic Express, Delftse Post, Susie and I. The rain stopped. The sky cleared. We set off, gingerly, BE leading us through a maze of cycle paths, traffic schemes, road works and absolutely out of their skull pedestrians (but no hippies) on to the Asse road. The traffic thinned out. The wind dropped to nothing. The road was well lit. And the cycle paths.............
I'm going to have to get to this sooner or later, so I might as well get on with it. The N9 is an old trunk road that has been turned in to a two-laner. To the outside of the road there is parking space. To the outside of the parking space there is a cycle lane. Then there is (sometimes) a footpath. So we intrepid seven found ourselves riding down an eight foot wide cycle lane that dodged left, right and sometimes joined the road, which sometimes had a bus land down the middle of it. All of which betokens a degree of social organisation that I'd not expected of Belgium's anarchists. Now other people's democratic decisions are not my concern, but I tell you this - if some clod comes up with the same stupid plan for the A23 through Streatham, they're going to get it in a big way. Because what it does is turns towns in to ribbons of houses, hosing out the centred organisation that makes a town a town. It also makes for tricky cycling - you'd not want to be going down that cycle path past a thousand car doors, weaving over kerbs during the day time - and I found the irregular surfaces and the left-right-right-left stuff a bit wearing. And I did wonder how Belgian cyclists got to be any good. And then there's the brothels. Cycle paths bring brothels.
But, there you have it. Asse was asleep, and Aalst was even sleepier. Gent, at 33 miles was wide awake. We were invited in to a house of ill-fame rammed with Euro-Popsters, but Els, sensibly opted for the 't Hoekske cafe, and all was going well until........
The sound of a chute is a dreadful thing. When it's the one you love, it's completely horrible. Susie got her front wheel in to a tramline and that was it. She laid on the floor, terrified. Martin, sound chap, took charge, and we got her to move each limb in turn. All was well, albeit painfully well. She came to the cafe in tears, but, despite being clearly frightened, decided she wanted to go on. And so we headed across the town centre, found ourselves a canal and turned left...........
I'd rather wipe my arse with a badger than ride down a towpath in England. They're narrow, bumpy and bespattered with the remains of anglers - at least I think they're remains because they don't so much as flick an eyelid as you negotiate your way around their rods and baskets and crazy thermos flask collections.......but in Belgium, the towpaths are smooth, three times as wide and, better yet, devoid of anglers. And so we swanned along, not too fast, not too slow, just about right, and Susie gained her confidence back, bit by bit, and rode all the way to Brugge which has streets paved with cobbles and the kind of retro-shmetro tea room open for early morning coffee that, if it were in Broadway Market would have the locals wearing those sixties piled up hairdos and sports jackets and, wait a minute...........whoops. We'll never know.
Fifteen more miles of towpath, the mist hanging like a blanket over the canal, the sun on our shoulders and Flemish chain gangs (actually not too chainy) riding up and down in matching kit. Oostende is a tricky item to navigate, but Els led us, unerringly, to the Caruso cafe where some people ordered lemon meringue pie, cloudlike in its consistency. Me, I had a ham and cheese sandwich, and damn good it was too.
Martin, Susie and I said our goodbyes and boarded the tram. I'd been looking forward to this, but with Susie in pain it was a lot less fun that it might have been. We got off at De Panne, failed to find a taxi, failed with the bus, and set off for the port of Dunkerque, some twenty one miles distant. The wind was now in our faces, and getting stronger, but, cometh the hour, cometh the man....... Martin led us to the border and down a gentle road, made gentler by being closed at one end for a bike race, and then through Dunkerque, which is no easy thing. Slowly, slowly we traversed 'honest' suburbs (as in you wouldn't want to live there) and then across a plain inhabited by a vast petrochemical works, to the ferry terminal. Susie was absolutely all in when we reached the ferry, having cycled a hundred and three miles, seventy of them after crashing. We drank Coke and were glad of it, slumbered on the ferry, and then Martin led us, and, indeed, the rest of the cyclists out of the terminal and in to town and up to the station. Susie and I thanked him (but not nearly enough) and we jumped on a train that eventually got to Victoria, and another to Balham. Susie said no to a taxi and did the mile ride home with some difficulty. Prosecco, prawns and smoked salmon (from Waitrose, which, as we all know, is a workers co-op) dulled the hurt a little, and she slept until eleven this morning, waking much the better for the rest.
And that's the story of our ride. I'll spare you the bit about getting busted by the fuzz at lunch today, and content myself with the most heartfelt thanks to all my riding companions, not least Els for organising the thing and being so unutterably cool that I knew I had to go, Baltic Express for getting us out of Brussels and Martin for his care and patience on the road from De Panne.
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0oKUpIqwek
(my excuse for not having filed a full report)
. And for a first attempt it was a fine piece of work: a simple route, a very nice half way stop and an even better end of ride cake stop.
