Cycling runs deep in the culture here: riding the cobbles and countryside of Flanders

27.11.2023 - 13:27 / theguardian.com

The Belgians love their cycling, but the Flemish worship it. The Flanders half of Belgium is laced with dedicated cycle routes carefully delineated and signposted. Whole towns close for road races. Bike sculptures lurk in fields. Posters of famous riders pepper high streets. Cycling runs deep in the culture here: that background hum you can hear? It’s the ceaseless whirr of oiled chain on metal cog.

As a result, cyclists from this part of the world, dubbed Flandriens, are deemed among the toughest on the planet thanks to their years of endurance in the wind and rain that tears across this open, flat country during the chill months, and for their ability to stay upright on the painful, treacherous cobbles.

Oh, those damned cobbles. Known locally as pavé, the geometric blocks are merciless and many have been in place for hundreds of years. They are the diametric opposite of the velvety smooth ride you get with tarmac. But it’s this unforgiving hardness that appeals to cyclists, and these sections are still associated with many of the classic spring cycle races, held in March and April, mainly on Belgian soil: nightmarish epics such as the Paris-Roubaix.

“Next time, bring a gumshield to protect your teeth from the juddering,” says a friend after punishing hours rattling over pavé, bikes and bodies threatening to come apart. No, next time I’ll miss out on the cobbles altogether – and thankfully that is an option. You can choose from long, short, lumpy and non-lumpy routes, or you can just please yourself in this most bike-friendly country with its amazing bike lanes – seemingly never-ending, a dream for Engish cyclists accustomed to abrupt kerbs, intrusive street furniture and foaming car drivers amped up on anti-LTN rage.

We’d rolled off LeShuttle at Calais the day before. Half an hour from Folkestone and then just over two hours to Brakel, a small town in the south of Flanders, handily placed for the Ronde van Vlaanderen loops, three circuits of the region: red, yellow and blue, between 80km and 115km, each carefully planned to ferret out the steepest of hills in this flattest of countries, and all punctuated with sections of teeth-shattering cobbles.

Our accommodation, the Flandrien Hotel in Brakel, is a cyclists’ haven: locked bike storage, space and tools for maintenance, laundry facilities and even a pressure washer. High-carb breakfast is included and keeps coming, while the communal breakfast/bar area is hung with scores of classic racing bikes for gear-heads to drool over.

But we came for the teeth-shattering experience of those infamous cobbles, and so we must commit. Day one is the 115km red route and the legendary Muur van Geraardsbergen, a staple of the Tour of Flanders. Its narrow, winding