TdE - Day 46 Hoogstraaten - Leiden

Route: Hoogstraaten - Breda - Dordrecht - Rotte - Leiden
Distance: 123 km
Elevation: 215 m
Duration: 5:57 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, tailwind, getting a bit colder, 17 C

Overall Route: Leiden - Vennbahn - Trier - Mosel til Koblenz - Rhine til Mainz - Main - Tauber - Altmuehl - Donau - Black Forrest - Alsace - Canal Rhine - Rhone - Saar - Luxembourg - Ardennes - Flanders cycling classics - UCI World Championship - Leiden
Distance: 3,091 km
Elevation: 15,749 m
Duration: 46 days, including a rest week at my parents
Weather: Phenomenal! Mainly sunny, a few days with some clouds. More days that is was actually slightly too hot for me to ride than days that it rained (I  think proper rain only on 2 days, and a bit of drizzle maybe on another 2). 

In total over these past 6,5 weeks, I have ridden a bit over 3,000 km (3,091 km to be precise) and racked up a total elevation of over 15,000 m (15,749 m to be precise again). 

I haven't made the calculations, but that is probably more elevation than in the entire rest of the year. Poor flat Netherlands... (picture from quite close to home... just to illustrate the flaty flatness of the NETHERlands):

On my last day of this tour around Europe I put in another long day, with over 120 km... but I was massively helped by a nice and steady tailwind. Plus the weather got better again, no rain, just some decorative clouds. However clearly autumn is coming... the temperatures are dropping. The first day that I did not ride in my T-shirt but instead in the Castelli ROS jacket... albeit mostly with the arms zipped out. 

Probably the nicest part of today's ride was at the beginning, still in Belgium (!) where I had a nice winding river with a bicycle path alongside ...

.... that also continued beyond the border. 

Further on I followed simply what Komoot had planned as a direct route, which, as we are now in the Netherlands was all on either very good, or at least good cycling paths, although mostly along highways, so not really nice areas of the country. But the purpose of the straight line from Tienen to Leiden wasn't to see specially nice parts, but to get back to Leiden by Tuesday evening, in just 2 days for over 200 km. 

And this goal was achieved and something even waited for me back home:

Oh yeah... the first washing machine in over a month!

TdE - Day 45 Tienen - Hoogstraaten

Route: Tienen - Aarschot - Herentals - Hoogstraaten 
Distance: 83 km
Elevation: 279 m
Duration: 4:29 h
Weather: initially cloudy, then rainy, colder than in the past days, but sandals were still okay while riding, 16 C

Now back on the way to home in the Netherlands. When I first set out for this trip through Europe, I hadn't really planned the Belgian part. I knew that with EuroVelo 5  I would be able to come until Brussels (where I actually didn't go at all) and was confident that from there I should be able to find a good route back to the Netherlands. Finally due to the World Championships and thanks to the amazing weather during this entire trip, today would become only the second day to really get wet, I did arrive earlier in Belgium and stayed longer. But now it is time to head back home, to my new job starting on Friday this week. 

When I planned this return, I saw the option to use the Stedenroute, which is a tour connecting Brussels to Amsterdam passing through Antwerp, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and Alphen aan den Rijn, but from Tienen it would have been too far to cover in 2 days, and I wanted to be back in Leiden by Tuesday evening to have 2 days prior to my new job. So instead I opted for a pretty straight line from Tienen to Leiden, which happened to pass through Herentals, Breda and Dordrecht. Today on the first day, I would still stay in Belgium and stop shortly before the border in a small town called Hoogstraaten, in a surprisingly good, modern hotel. So modern that the hotel staff needs to explain how to switch on the lights in the room. 

Unfortunately during the second part of the ride, from Herentals onwards, it did rain. So once I arrive to my posh hotel I was pretty much covered in mud... but luckily Flemish people are all cycling fans and probably also cyclo cross fans, so they were not phased out by my appearance at check in. And in the room I tried to keep my mud to one sector of the room only. 

The first part of the ride to Aarschot was on quite nice country lanes ... 

... then came a section on one of those Belgian train tracks ...

... but there were also other cycling paths, like this one, specially paved with cobbles only in the cycling lane!!!

... which wasn't the worst part though... but even the parts later on between Herentals and Hoogstraaten on a main road were done reasonably well. Not totally save, but the felt safer than some other microscopic, bumpy cycling paths I had used in Belgium elsewhere. 

Belgium will remain in my mind as this strange cycling crazy nation, that doesn't know how to build cycling paths. Mystery! 

TdE - Day 44 World Championship in Leuven

Route: Tienen - Leuven - Tienen
Distance: 
     Susanne: 0 km
     Julian Alaphilippe: 276 km
Train: 40 km
Duration: 5:56:34 h (Julian Alaphilippe) 
Weather: sun and clouds, a bit colder but no rain

Today was I think the first rest day for me in 44 days of cycling through Europe, but only because I had other people cycle for me. Including the eventual two times world champion Julian Alaphilippe: 

But not only him, the local hero WVA (Wout van Aert) also came by a total of 8 times…

As well as MvdP (Mathieu van der Poel) his “nemesis” from the Netherlands and not loved by the crowd along the street:

I found out about a good week ago, that the World Championships would be at Leuven, right at the time when I would be in Belgium. So instead of using a more direct route from the Ardennes back to the Netherlands (and probably just arriving back home a few days earlier), I did hang around in Belgium in the last days slowly and indirectly approaching the Leuven area. 

After seeing yesterday the women's World Championship from the side of the road in the Flandrien loop, i.e. outside in the countryside on a cobbled climb, for the men's event, I decided to head to Leuven city center, where they had a loop that they would pass a total of 8 (!) times as part of a much longer race, which started in Antwerp, heading to Leuven and the first city loop, then out into the countryside around Overijse for 2 loops, than back to the city for 4 loops, back again to Overijse for a bit more hills and cobbles out there before coming back for 3 more loops and the finish line in Leuven. 

I had targeted the Saint Antoniusberg for viewing the race, but it turned out that no spectators where allowed on that rather narrow climb, so I took a spot in the street on the top of the Saint Antoniusberg, just about 1,6 km from the eventual finish line. 

I went to Leuven by train, which was definitely a good idea. A bicycle in the city would just have been a hindrance, although there were more than enough people around with a bike. The city was full with spectators lining the streets, but surprisingly the trains weren't that incredibly crowded. I even got a seat both on the way in and out of Leuven. 

One of the riders, Tom Pidcock, after the race said that it felt more like racing in a stadium (because of the cheering crowds) rather than racing on the open streets. And yes, people were chanting a lot along the road where I was. Mainly "Woutje Van Aert", some also "Forza Remco" and others were more supportive of Yves Lampaert, but the main roar was for WVA. While when Mathieu van der Poel passed the crowd generally was booing. Strangely enough they didn't show the same animosity towards other riders of other nations, so apparently for the Flemish fans it was a Netherlands against Flandern race. I say "Flandern" not "Belgium", because I think there was not a single rider in the Belgium squad who was from Wallonia. 

The peloton got smaller and smaller with each round, clearly a lot of the riders were drawing out of the race once their part of the job was done. A few rolled through very relaxed, greeting the crowd and enjoying the atmosphere... others looked utterly done in.

Julian Alaphilippe attacked right on the Saint Antoniusberg in the last but one lap and got a distance quite quickly. Already by the time he was were I was standing, maybe 200 m after the end of that berg, he was clear from the reduced bunch (of I think 17 riders, containing all the favorites), and they didn't manage to catch him in the remaining lap. The people along the street were not happy with that. Right opposite to where I was standing was a bar with a small TV set screening the World Championships, which was great, specially for this final loop. And as we watched Julian Alaphilippe staying away from the bunch, the mood got more gloomy and the "Woutje van Aert" chorus died. When Julian Alaphilippe, still the sole leader came by a last time just a bit over 1 km from the finish line half of the crowd was actually booing... while the other half (me included) was animating and applauding him. He got there first anyway. 

There were however also non Belgians along the road:

BTW, this is how the ride into the city looked like when I first came to Leuven walking from the station into town:

Real cycling fans might not be surprised, but I was. Instead of using team bicycles, e.g. a bicycle of the Belgian national team all cyclists were using their "own" bicycles from their normal teams, as one can observe on these pictures of team mates from Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium respectively. 

They even had different sponsors for their bib shorts, e.g. Quebeka and Bahrain Victorius the two Italian riders above. While the shirt seemed to be the national shirt. 

In retrospective, probably a logical thing, as you are used to THAT bicycle, and not just any bicycle, but must be a logistical nightmare for the mechanics to have that many different bike brands and components to care for.

As I didn't ride a single meter today... here the Strava from someone who did ride:

TdE - Day 43 Elewijt - Tienen

Route: Elewijt - Huldenberg (World Championship) - Tienen
Distance: 61 km
Elevation: 521 m
Duration: 4:00 h
Weather: very sunny, 20 C (but felt hotter in the sun)

Somewhere midway through my cycling trip through Europe I learned that this weekend there would be the World Championship of road racing in Belgium!

Marianne Vos, would ultimately be just second and be really disappointed 

… And I was most likely going to be in Belgium at the time. I no longer got a as room at Leuven, but Tienen isn’t far away and has a direct train line to Leuven, which I plan to take tomorrow (to watch the men’s race in town), but today I went out to what is called the “Flandrien circuit” a bit to the South of Leuven in a hilly part around Overijse (a name I first heard about half a year ago when watching my first cyclocross races - from the comfort of my sofa). 

Today I planned my day MUCH better than yesterday, and arrived with ample time in the area of the circuit. Actually I thought that I arrived with even more time to spare than I actually did. I hadn’t realized that they close the course more than 2 hours before the riders would come through. 

Initially I had planned to view the race from the Smyesberg, the only hill the women would do twice…

…but when I came there, there were no spectators yet lined up, so I just went up (pushing the bike) and over it, following the official route. But already at the next climb, the Moskesstraat, the route got closed off. But this was actually great timing, because  this was such a Flandrien climb: short, sharp, cobbled and narrow (and crucially for me: in the shade), so I decided to stay there. 

When I decided to stop, I was virtually the first spectator on that hill. And that was totally fine with me. I had enough water on the bike (for which I found a good enough space along the climb) and I had bought a sandwich shortly after my hotel, and I even found a reasonably comfortable twig on which to sit… so I relaxed at the wayside, observing the preparations until a few more spectators arrived:

And the second mechanic of the Swiss team with two replacement wheels, but no Allen key, which he borrowed from a spectator.

Then at some point also the official photojournalist arrived and searched for the ideal place where to stain themselves. And after even more time, finally the peloton: 

The peloton did not pass without difficulties this climb. Demi Vollering had gearing issues and needed to push up her bike! 

What was interesting on this second hill of the Flandrien course, the time difference between the first and last rider was probably something like 3 minutes. Compare that to the time difference at the end of the Flandrien circuit. 

When all had passed I slowly took my bike, pushed it up the rest of the hill and then set course towards Tienen, but after not that much I crossed again the course and the professional cyclists hadn’t arrived yet! So I waited with some other spectators there. This was after all the Flandrien hills and from there they would head back through relatively flat terrain to Leuven for the final hills. What was surprising that by then big distances between the different groups on the road had opened. By then the peloton was split in several groups (echelons, only that it wasn’t really windy) plus a good number of solo riders struggling to find a group with whom to ride. I think the time difference at this point was more like 15 minutes between first and last rider. Waiting for them to pass I also was again very happy about my prior decision to have the main view on the shady cobbled climb. In the plain sun it was really hot! 

Once all of the riders had passed, we, the spectators got on our bikes and rode on. 

The second part of my ride was much like a Paris - Roubaix with a lot of cobbles and even some gravel roads, but that seems to be the price to pay in Belgium for cycling on roads with little car traffic. 

When writing this post I was really surprised about the elevation, over 500 m! Really? Yes, there were the two climbs of the world championship (that I pushed my bicycle up), and the terrain was a bit rolling… but 500 m ??? Either it is wrong, or it says a lot about just how flat the Netherlands are. Not sure I will enjoy riding in that flat terrain again just as much as I did before setting out for this 5+ week trip through Europe. 

TdE - Day 42 Gent - Elewijt

Route: Gent - Schelde - Dendermonde - Mechelen - Elewijt 
Distance: 88 km
Elevation: 136 m
Duration: 4:43 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, and a bit windy, 20 C 

Frankly speaking, today was a rather unremarkable day, probably also because I missed the planned highlight of the day, as I started WAY too late. Bad planning…

So the planned highlight was to try to see the U23 men road race world championships somewhere between Antwerpen and Leuven, probably around Bonheiden or Keerbergen, which are both after Mechelen… only that Mechelen was at nearly 80 km from Gent, and I didn’t stay in Gent before 10ish… which was definitely too late for me to make it all the way. 

Apart from this, the Ride was quite similar to riding in the Netherlands: rivers, canals, dikes and wind. 

Only in Dendermonde I took a probably wrong decision to already cross the Schelde in order to avoid a ferry crossing where or seemed that the ferry would travel only once an hour… But the Schelde on the Dendermonde side doesn’t really have a cycling way. So for some time I was stuck in heavy traffic (on a cycling path which was just about acceptable but not nice not good). 

Only later I made it on a cycling path along a train line which was only for cyclists… but it had to cross the train line a bit too frequently, so that one couldn’t really just ride on. 

Today I also found the second bucket of utilitarian cyclists in Belgium: in Mechelen! I only crossed the city on a canal, but wow was there bicycle traffic! I mean, just normal amount from a Dutch perspective, but not sure I crossed any other city on my trip with that many cyclists around and about.

The night today I am spending in a congress hotel, somewhere not too far from Mechelen, the highway and the airport. 

When I checked in, the receptionist informed me that there is also a fitness area… but I think that 88 km of cycling is sufficient fitness for a day… so instead I switched on the television and watched the last 30ish kilometer of the bike race, while washing my kit (with the hotel’s rubber duck).

TdE - Day 41 Kortrijk - Gent

Route: Kortrijk - Oude Kwaremont - Paterberg - Koppenberg - Oudenaarde - Gent
Distance: 79 km 
Elevation: 296 m
Duration: 4:19 h
Weather: sunny and some clouds, more in the afternoon, 20 C

Well, so I have to admit that sometimes I am in delay with my “homework” and this is one of these posts. So instead of writing it actually on the evening after climbing the Oude Kwaremont, the Paterberg and the Koppenberg, I am writing this while sitting on the pavement close to the Saint Antoinusberg in Leuven, waiting for the men’s World Championship to pass for the second time. 

But back to this ride, which took me over some pretty iconic climbs in Flandern, all three of them cobbled climbs. 

The first, Oude Kwaremont was actually reusable for me (and my luggage), this one being at an average of 4% and a maximum of 11,6 % (on cobbles!). The other two where much steeper with an rebate of 11% or 12 % and a maximum gradient of over 20% both of them. Who invented such hills? And then paves them with cobbles???

But then I was also able to ride over the pictures of Fabio Cancellara, Tom Boonen and Johan Museeuw on the top of the Paterberg. 

I wasn’t always a cycling aficionado, when living in Spain I was definitely following football and not cycling, but since rediscovering my love for cycling (myself, not necessarily watching others doing it), I got more into cycling and since last year watched my fair share of cycling races (on TV). So it was special to ride up (or push up) MY bike on a climb I had seen several times in television already, seeing the curve at the top of Paterberg … or the other day, seeing the chapel on top of the Muur. Something like being able to play football in a proper stadium. Maybe not like playing football in the Camp Nou, that would probably bring riding up the Stelvio , but still…

The day however started in the flat along a canal out from Kortrijk to the Schelde river. 

And if I hadn’t actively chosen to see/ride those three iconic bergs, the ride from Kortrijk to Gent would have been pretty flat, just along canals and rivers. 

I also came through Oudenaarde, an other city with cycling races named after it. 

And the night I spent together with Roubaix in a apartment hotel in the center of Gent …

… and tried an other version of Kwaremont.

TdE - Day 40 Geraardsbergen - Kortrijk

Route: Geraardsbergen - Ronse - Roubaix - Wevelgem - Kortrijk
Distance: 95 km
Elevation: 362
Duration: 5:42 h
Weather: sunny, 19 C

Today Roubaix went to Roubaix! And I with her. 

Unfortunately the velodrome was closed to the public, they were repainting the advertisement on the track, probably in preparation of Paris-Roubaix race coming up in a few weeks. So I missed out on my first ever attempt at riding around a velodrome. 

Roubaix itself is a quite depressing place. Clearly very poor, quite dirty, high number of immigrants and in general in disrepair and apparently abandoned by the local administration. 

Getting TO the velodrome however, except the last kilometer or so was quite nice. 

Shortly after leaving Geraardsbergen I joined one of the train track bicycle roads. 

In Ronse (another Flemish town with a lot of cycling history), I had my first stop and stocked up on a baguette, which is really ideal. My cycling shirt even comes with a dedicated bag for it:

And while it is not too comfortable walking with it, riding feels great. The baguette gently resting on my back waiting to get inside the belly. 

It had to wait until I made it to the canal, the first canal in a lot of days (since the Lorraine) and the first flat canal probably since leaving the Netherlands. Yes, there are a few sluices, but nothing to compare to the sluice infestation in Alsace and Lorraine, where the canal had to overcome a proper mountain. 

This canal a little bit later bifurcated and a smaller one went straight to Roubaix. The border as such wasn’t indicated, but it must have been where the tarmac ended and a fine gravel started, which was fine though. 

After the visit to the velodrome the next fine part of the ride was only in Belgium once back on a canal towards Kortrijk. Crossing Roubaix and the towns around it however was quite awful. Truth be told, there were mostly some kind of cycleways and some weren’t really that bad. There was one along a small canal, and another one shared with the public buses, which was actually quite fine, because it had separate traffic lights and there weren’t that many buses. I think actually none in the time I used it. But the problem was just generally the traffic, the pollution, the chaos and a constant search for if there is a cycle lane, where does it continue, how to get there…

What a contrast the canal made! Peaceful quietness, no cars, good tarmac, continuous riding, leafy trees, no stress. 

And this canal brought me right into the middle of Kortrijk which so far was the best place for utilitarian cycling in Belgium. Without a lot of infrastructure but a simple rule, the city administration achieved a very cycling friendly city center:

Cars are allowed maximum 30 km/h PLUS they are not allowed to overtake any cyclist! 

And the effect was immediately visible, the city was teeming with cyclists of all kind. 

And Kortrijk also had a nice center: