Alex’s Adventures in Oudenaarde — Part I

Alexander Tyndall
Nov 4 · 9 min read

What happens when a moderately unfit lifestyle journalist and his father attempt to follow in the footsteps of the world’s toughest pro cyclists on the mud-spattered cobbles of Flanders? Read on to find out…

Car loading and carb loading

There’s little to be said about the drive to Oudenaarde, our base for the weekend, other than that the Eurotunnel is much as it ever was — though eerily empty even on a Friday afternoon. I had worried that the UK’s averted EU crash-out on Thursday night would make me feel glum when we came blinking into the cloudy light of a French afternoon, but I’m happily surprised that we arrive on a wave of relief. What a bloody joy it is that all this difference is right on the doorstep. And what a bloody joy it is that we’ve contrived, somehow, still to be a part of it, even if only for one more day.

Welcome to Belgium, feat. every cloud in Europe

The journey from Calais to Belgium is… well, it’s a cloudy, often wet afternoon in early November. These aren’t conditions in which people write love songs. But thanks to tidy French roads, Podcasts and Google Maps it’s mercifully brief. Our accommodation is Oudenaarde’s Leopold Hotel — which I find immediately encouraging thanks to the mannequin, dressed head to toe in hotel-branded cycle gear, standing in the hotel lobby. Having worked out very quickly that two weeks of learning Dutch on Duolingo doesn’t cut any ice with the Flemish dialect (not much call for “the rhino has both a horn and a tail” when you’re checking in to a hotel) and dropped our bags in our clean, cosy twin, Tim and I wander into town in search of Day Zero Dinner.

Oudenaarde itself is a youngish-looking town arranged around a cluster of Gothic buildings which have been lit up in the autumnal evening as only European towns seem to possess. We plump for De Mouterij, a restaurant that smells of cuddling by the fireside and heartwarming soup and which has a small shrine to Mark Knopfler arranged just inside the front door. We assume he must once have been a patron — though given the commitment to an Eighties soundtrack the proprietors could just be massive Dire Straits fans. We bond with the locals by grimacing at footage of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson on the local news (“your Prime Minister”, they hoot in exasperated amusement and pity, in painfully good English) and sip sinful, restorative Belgian beers at the bar before being settled in the comfy dining room, surrounded by yet more photos of Knopfler as he embarked upon his solo career.

As we sit down a ramekin of mayonnaise is slipped quietly on to the table. And at some point between Year of the Cat by Al Stewart and 10cc’s Not in Love, Day Zero carb-loading arrives in the shape of enough frites to feed four and a steak that I would like to paint among lilies. It’s crisscrossed with smoky blackness without, tender as melting butter, sweet and animal within. The ramekin of mayonnaise goes undisturbed. Nothing needs any seasoning. I’m nitpicking here, really I am, but if I could change one thing, it’d be the painting of the Crucifixion, accompanied by Dutch-choral covers of Losing My Religion by REM, that looms in the gents’ and would be enough to give Patrick Stewart stage fright.

Oude with it

Day One, and we open with a continental breakfast (at least, I eat a selection of breads, pastries and granola that don’t go together in a way that I would never do in the UK) and a debate about the merits of 25mm versus 28mm tyres, while watching the worst of the autumn mizzle rain itself out. It’s mere happenstance, of course, that the worst of the autumn mizzle is raining itself out during the rugby World Cup final. But when life gives lemons…

Today’s ride is the “Blue Loop” (de blauwe ronde, I think), a shortish and sharpish rattle through cobbled sections with macabre names and knee-popping but brief climbs. It’s a 50-metre roll from the hotel to the Centrum Ronde Van Vlaanderen, a sleek museum filled with cobblestone trophies and mud-smeared bikes, where Cycling in Flanders’s route begins and ends. The rain has buggered off but it’s blustery as we clip in and set off down the exposed cycle path beside the river. Today the wind will be our constant companion and, more often than not, a bit of a bête noire as we pick our way through a highlights reel of cycling masochism.

Cobbles sneak up on you. We see our first set when the road pitches lazily upwards towards one of the lumps that mark the horizon in the Flemish Ardennes. Ahead of us the surface of the road suddenly shimmers in the afternoon sunlight — none of the matte greyishness of asphalt here. It’s the polished shine of cobblestones. I shift up to grind a slightly bigger gear, I sit back in the saddle and rest my hands on the tops, like several wiry men on YouTube said I should, and it begins. It isn’t the bucking bronco I expected. My elbows and wrists aren’t dislocated with each slip from one stone to the next. It’s more like an insistent, heavy vibration that shakes me wholesale than a transmission of massive discomfort from the front wheel. This is the Oude Kwaremont, a comparatively civilised kilometre or so of juddering ascent that opens into wide farmland with fenland-black fields on either side. As suddenly as it starts, it’s over, and we’re gratefully sliding over pancake-smooth tarmac again. Well, that wasn’t so bad. 80km of this? Easy.

Tim monsters his way across the Oude Kwaremont

So much for the christening. I stiffen nervously as our next appointment with Doctor Cobble flashes up on the Garmin. Paterbergstraat. The Paterberg, a climb which, all the cycling websites claim, was manufactured in the 1980s because a Belgian farmer was sick with envy that his next-door neighbour had the Koppenberg hill on his land (more of which in a moment) and fancied getting in on the action, so he deliberately laid cobbles on a perfectly good paved road and crowed about it for the Tour of Flanders organisers. All I can say about said farmer is that I really hope he’s enjoying the fires of Hell.

At the bottom we’re accosted by a friendly group of Belgian hikers as we take photos next to the street sign, then it’s straight into the smallest gear I possess and up we go. Like most of the slopes in Flanders, the Paterberg is a slap in the face of a hill with an average slope of about 12 per cent. From the first judder I’m heaving, shoulders rocking left-to-right with each grape-treading turn. Then the road bears right and ahead the kick in the tail hoves into view: a sudden slam of 20 per cent gradient that’s watching you the whole time you churn your way towards it. The friendly Belgians, striding their way up with their hiking boots and technical fabrics, part from the roadway offering encouragement: “You’re nearly there!” “Good cadence!” I rasp out a barely cogent thank-you while trying not to think how much my breath tastes of blood and grind on. My standard climber’s mantra of “good legs, good legs” is useless when my heart and lungs are screaming too. My heart can’t physically go any faster and still the bastard is not beaten. The Belgians are watching. I can’t get off now. I can’t possibly go on, I can’t damn well stop. And then it levels, the hill fades away, and I can shift up into a bigger gear. The deep animal in me howls in triumph and suddenly I’m howling too. I have rarely felt such primal triumph.

Kop out

As Tim arrives at the top he’s joined by the Belgians, who say knowingly, “It’s the Koppenberg next, but it’s covered in mud.” Well, that’s great. We’ve apparently picked the day after a pro cyclocross race blasted up the region’s most notorious cobbled climb to make our assault on the summit. In the event the closest we get is the brown road sign, peppered with cycling club stickers, at the foot of the hill. About a quarter of the way up the slope, which peaks at a Paterberg-shaming 22 per cent, my rear wheel starts to fishtail on the slick of glossy mud. Tim and I take one look at each other, say “sod this” at exactly the same time and settle for beasting the much shallower paved climb next door. The Koppenberg and I have unfinished business but I want it to be a fair fight.

Proof that we made it to the bottom of the Koppenberg, feat. Mr Steal Yo Girl

The wind howls a note higher as we hit the long, flat cobbled transfer to the Taaienberg hill, and it’s at this point that I start cursing the signs by the side of the road that read coldly “wegdek in slechte staat”. Road surface in a bad state. Really. I had no idea. Gusts blast us off the narrow corridors of smooth passage over the rough blocks of stone and my knuckles are rattled on a long, sweeping cobbled descent. I don’t mind the cobbles on a climb; climbing isn’t supposed to be fun. But they’re ruining my descending now and I feel precious about that.

Cobbles and crosswinds. Pick your poison

I’m so busy being in a bad mood about the shaking in my elbows that the climb of the Taaienberg takes me by surprise. The first I notice of it is the line marking the start of the Strava segment painted on the road surface (which, by the way, is a brilliant idea) and then it’s cobbles and climbs again. Maybe it’s the grump, maybe it’s the fact it’s no Paterberg, maybe it’s Maybelline, but I feel much better grinding up this one, and only the dull pain in my fingers reminds me of the increasing toll the cobbles are taking. Taaienberg means “tough hill” in Dutch apparently (I say apparently, it wasn’t on Duolingo) but it’s a mere 7/10 on the Paterberg scale of prompting me to consider my own mortality.

Kruisberg Alive

We stop, dead on half-way, at the Bistro Boekzitting, which emerges between the trees at the top of a mercifully paved, though wind-blasted, hill. I have the best hot chocolate I’ve ever drunk in my life and chew on a lump of nougat. The first half, thankfully, is the worst. We’re about to turn away from the wind, which by now is gusting at 40mph and making a mockery of the sections of the route laid out for recovery from the cobbled hills. From here it’s almost all smooth asphalt and rolling roads back to Oudenaarde.

Top of the Kruisberg. That’s all from Dr Cobble today

Almost. The last cobblestone to smack us across the teeth is the Kruisberg, a relatively gentle but comparatively long stretch of hill that announces itself, as we’re getting used to by now, with a Strava segment reminder just before the slope and the road surface set to work on the legs. Up it goes, a weirdly domesticated road considering its status as one of the Tour of Flanders’s most beloved climbs. No open fields here; it’s 1970s des-res houses and new Mercedes lining the roadsides as the hill aches its way up out of the town of Ronse, which is holding a particularly windswept funfair in the town square, Wuthering Heights in 1980s neon. By the time the cobbles give up after 1km of Kruisberg climbing, my pelvis is feeling bruised from the force coming up through the saddle and 20km of gentle asphalt sound just dandy.

We have deux pressions

We practically glide back into Oudenaarde on a tailwind of gusty breezes, spinning through the gears lightly — the grinding can wait for another day. Tomorrow it’s a curtailed blat around the Ronde’s “red loop”, but that can wait, too, as I have an appointment with a Kwaremont beer.

The moment before you realise you’re doing another 80km tomorrow