I wrote this in late March, 2006, shortly after our trip to Flanders
earlier that month. A few people were kind
enough to pretend they enjoyed it, so here it is, rescued from the
oblivion of my mailbox.
... in which our correspondent discusses climbing a wall, visiting
a museum, and chatting with the locals.
I.
I did hill-repeats a week ago Zaterdag.
I was based in Ghent, in eastern Flanders, and my destination was an
obscure town due south named Geraardsbergen. Geraardsbergen is big
enough to warrant a train to it from Ghent, but only just. Its
four-track station was peopled by: a ticket-seller, three bored
teenagers, and a confused-looking middle-aged person who wordlessly
stared at us the whole time. The cafe, uninhabited by people or
goods, represented the triumph of economics over hope.
I wasn't supposed to be at the station at all. I'd based myself in
Ghent so I could ride to Geraardsbergen, but a nasty bronchitis meant
I had little energy to spare, especially for the numerous wrong turns
I was sure to make on rural roads. The train was a fair compromise
when the alternative was going nowhere at all.
The previous day, while we stumbled jet-lagged around Ghent, it rained
and rained. At night I went to the receptionist to ask whether she
had a weather forecast for the next day. She smiled and arced her
hand toward the outside. “You mean it's Flanders in the
spring?” She smiled again in eloquent silence. Fair enough; had
it been warm or dry, I'd have felt robbed of some fundamental part of
the experience.
Moreover, I was prepared. I'd asked a Flemish friend, Kim Mens, how
to pack for this. It will be cold, he said, and I should expect lots
of rain. I was more concerned about snow, which could ice and turn
roads—especially upwardly-inclined cobbled ones—nasty. But that
at least, he said, was one thing I shouldn't need to worry about in
Flanders.
We woke on Saturday to thick snowfall.
Any town with “berg” in its name is sure to be interesting,
and the town's French name offers confirmation: Grammont. But
Geraardsbergen goes one better: its hill is called the Muur, an
altogether better name that means “wall” (think
“mural”). The Muur, one of the final climbs of the Ronde
Van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders), is often the decisive point in the
race with mud, cobbles, pitch (up to 20%) and screaming crowds packed
into a tiny space. The town has signs with the word “Muur”
and a cycle icon. The burghers know why we're here.
Ignoring the people and the workings of the invisible hand, I wheeled
out of Geraardsbergen station. I'd printed the Ronde's maps, but the
route seemed to slash across town like a flailing snake—a ploy, I
felt sure, to maximize the town's chances of seeing the race. But
some of those could be one-ways, and nobody was holding traffic for
me. So I'd mapped another little street that avoided all the
meandering and instead got down (up) to business.
I was soon in the market square, an atmospherically dark gothic town
hall watching over a parking lot. A few obligatory wrong turns (and
descents) later, I found my chosen street. I saw that it rose
absurdly (think Jencks St in Providence, but 2-3 times as long, and
cobbled), but hey, that's what I'd come for. So I set off in the
haze, squirming over the terrain...only to be greeted by a barrier.
A barrier? Kim Mens's father had confirmed that repairs on the Muur
were long done; but here it was, and it forced me to dismount. Well,
you don't easily clip back in on an incline like that; you don't
easily, and I don't at all.
What to do now? I couldn't possibly *walk* up the Muur, but up ahead
I saw my savior. I'd read about the Hard Men of Flanders, and there
was one obstacle they were not known to master: stairs. This could
not be The Way. Reassured, I pushed up (which, on slick cobbles,
meant I frequently caught my slide by locking my cleats into the edge
of stone), descended, and finally got to a different cobbled road that
was barrier-less and stair-free. I was on the Muur.
After all these hijinx it was a relief to find it at all, so the
repeat climbs, which I'd earlier used to justify the trip, became
essential for reconstructing the experience.
The Muur is in two parts. The lower streets have small, very
rectangular, cobbles laid out with the long side perpendicular to
motion. Here you are in the midst of of town, the streets are wide,
and these cobbles look fresh. Then you take a 120 turn—which,
surprise, is precisely the route marked on the Ronde map—and
everything changes. The road narrows so much a large SUV or truck
would have trouble squeezing through, and probably couldn't turn the
sharp corners. And the cobbles are more square, like the one in the
Paris-Roubaix trophy. They are gapped, chipped, and sometimes
missing. There is little sidewalk to speak of, an interesting way to
host hundreds of drunk, screaming fans.
The lower part is on a sensible incline, so the natural instinct is to
accelerate. The resulting ride is is straight out of a cement mixer,
but this seemed the most pleasant way to tackle the unworldly
vibrations; indeed, all week long I found myself accelerating over
cobbles (and rather enjoying it). On the square cobbles, the trick is
finding a line. In the steepest stretches you can't sit for need of
power, but can't stand for lack of stability (due to moss on the
cobbles that makes your wheels slip); I nearly fell three times.
The rest of the week I rode around in cobbled Brugge and out of town.
Even in the middle of a working day we were passed by ones, twos and
groups of bikers on road machines, all dressed in the proper European
fashion of team or club kit head-to-toe and beyond. The area around
Brugge is filled with paths along canals bordered by perfectly aligned
poplars; the roads are straight as arrows, offering no protection from
the wind. My speed differential attributable just to wind was 4-5mph.
II.
This past Saturday I visited Oudenaarde, also in south-eastern
Flanders; once the home of Flemish tapestry, now host to the Ronde Van
Vlaanderen museum. They museum bills the Ronde as one of the two
great “cobbled” classics. Flanders had a fit of asphalt
surfacing in the sixties, which greatly altered the route of the
Ronde; the race has been part of a restoration and revival of cobbles,
especially on the hills—though the museum offers no perspective
from the locals who have to negotiate these hills daily.
The museum's organizational conceit is that you pick from a menu of
twelve past winners. You then hear about “your” rider at
various exhibits along the way. I suggested that Museeuw and Merckx
must be especially popular. Without disagreeing, the ticket person
noted seriously that Schotte was quite popular too—an indication
of the museum's demographics (Schotte reigned just after WW II; a
legendary Hard Man, he was nicknamed the Last of the Flandriens).
Then he broke out into a broad grin and confessed, “But Eddy is
number one.” (I felt obliged to tilt the statistics, and figured
Godefroot would be good for a quote or two—which he was.)
One of the museum's main attractions is a trainer set up before a
projection TV so you can ride against Peter Van Petegem. (I can't
wait for this to become cheap enough to put in a basement.) The
outcome is precisely what you'd expect, though nobody all day
(including me) spent more than about thirty seconds on it—keeping
up with them is a pretty sweaty activity. Besides, what trainer can
compare to the real terrain?
Amidst all this fun I skipped the museum cafe. I discovered just as
was leaving to run to make my train that Ludo Dierckxsens was visiting
for the day, and holding forth in the cafe on Milan-San Remo. The
museum has a steady round of visiting “speakers” such as
him, especially in the spring season. It vastly exceeded my
expectations and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone who's read this
far.
III.
The Bike Friday is, of course, a wonderful conversation piece. At the
top of the Muur we meet a late-middle-aged couple. After the usual
stumble through 3-4 languages we settle on English. Do we know what
the Tour of Flanders is? That's why we're here. Wonderful! A great
race! And there's a pause as they remain standing there with us.
I fill the gap. Are you from the town? This is their opening. Oh
no, they're from Antwerp. They're scouting out the climbs on the race
route. By foot? We have bikes back in town, he tells us. And then
very precisely, a bit sternly, he adds: “First we do it by foot.
Then by cycle.” She smiles sweetly.
So have they looked at other hills? Yes, they're working backwards.
They have been to the Bosberg, then, I ask, waving in its general
direction? Slowly, and with pride, he replies: “We have spent
the night on the Bosberg. (pause) We are with...” I recognize
the trailing voice of the vocabularly gap, but my
suggestions—friends, family, etc.—aren't helping. A moment,
and he straightens up and repeats slowly: “We are with
camper.” This is a habit? No, this is their first time, he says
with pure joy (she smiles very sweetly). They will be amongst the
masses; you can tell he will yell loud Flemish invective at the riders
while she smiles at the proceedings and lets out a little whoop as her
favorite rider comes by.
I play to the crowd. They're Flemish, so there's an easy guess: I
toss out that they surely have great hopes for Tom Boonen. Tom
Boonen!, he echoes, as she smiles sweetly. (I'm still pronouncing it
like the English language commentators, not quite getting the
intonations right, but we're past that.) He tells me Boonen has
excelled in Paris-Nice but, looking ominously around, and dropping his
mouth into a frown, he confides that Tom's climbing is not so good.
We ramble about TV coverage and other things. Looking to wind up and
depart this miserably chilly hilltop battered by gusting winds—he
has called the view from here “beautiful”, an indication
that regional pride has entirely trumped aesthetic sense—I decide
to play the trump card: Tom will be riding in the world champion
colors, yes? His breath catches. So maybe, I offer, we will see
Boonen win the Ronde wearing the rainbow stripes. She grins very
broadly, but he is too choked up with emotion; his heart-rate seems
like mine was when I crested; if he could breathe, I reckon, he would
break out into the Belgian national anthem(s?). On that note we wave
these fine people goodbye. She wishes us well but he does not seem to
notice, his mouth puckered with pride and his eyes distant.
It is not our only encounter.
As the holder of an Indian passport, I have developed a host of
techniques to disarm immigration officials who express too much
interest (it's rarely of the positive kind) in me. Lately I have been
waved through immigration, but at Brussels airport I notice the staff
are in a questioning mood. Kathi's passport warrants none, but me he
asks where we are going. To Brugge eventually, but tonight to Gent.
He relaxes. “So you are in the Flemish part of Belgium!”,
he says, not disapprovingly. But he's still talking, so I want to
distract him. Yes, I say, and I add, “We go also to
Geraardsbergen.”
“Geraardsbergen!” he echoes, correcting my pronounciation
but smiling. “You go for the <something that sounds like it
would translate to mutton pies>?”
It is my turn to correct. I stiffen, straighten. As my hand makes a
sweeping upward motion, palm down, subscribing an angle about 65
degrees greater than reality, I say, “We go for the Muur”.
You can hear the capital `M'.
“The Muur!”, he roars. “Amateur cyclists!” (I
bristle slightly at the entirely accurate but unnecessary adjective.)
The trainee sitting beside him has said nothing, given away no emotion
as she has looked at me; but now she breaks out into a partisan smile.
He, meanwhile, is grinning a mile wide as he thumps a stamp into my
passport with a passion you would not have thought possible of a
government official.
Suspending the passport between us, he pauses. “When you go to
Geraardsbergen, you must try the <something that sounds like it would
translate to mutton pies>. It is the local speciality.” He
returns the passports so he can make a small round shape with his
thumbs and forefingers, and looks down at it a little wistfully, as if
hoping that by the powers vested in him by the Kingdom of Belgium, he
could make a mutton pie manifest itself in the ring of his hand. (She
does not appear too impressed by this gustatory passion.) When the
round refuses to fill, he looks back, smiles broadly (but, I feel,
just a little more sadly this time), and wishes us a excellent trip.
It is in the nature of contemporary journalism to make the most of
episodic data, to extrapolate wildly from a single incident. The
journalist wants, most of all, to be seen as the spotter of a trend
before anyone else. Your humble correspondent is not above such
frailty. Thus I am forced to report that when a citizen's first
reaction to hearing “Geraardsbergen” is to think mutton
pies—pies that, my instinct tells me, will not be on the
WeightWatchers approved list—over the Muur, the state of cycling
is in jeopardy. Tim Moore has pointed out that Eddy Merckx looks like
he stayed on his racing diet long after he stopped racing; and we have
citizens worried that Tom Boonen's climbing is not so good. I have
toured the breadth of Flanders this week, folks, and I have assembled
the evidence to report that it will be a while before we see another
Lucien Van Impe. You read it here first.
Coda
On reading this report, Kim Mens pointed out that the officer was
referring to mattetaarten—made, he said, of “butter,
milk, sugar and almond”. So I now regret having
missed out on them.
Oh, and Tom Boonen won the Tour of Flanders in his rainbow jersey.
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