Travellers’ tales: On the cobbles

At Dover, the start of our bikepacking trip to the Tour of Flanders, we cowered in the face of the roiling brown sea. We would be facing a 40kph crosswind during our ride from Dunkirk to Kortrijk for the sportive the following day… 

We joined the melee at about 10am the next morning: 16,000 people vying for space on wet, slippery cobbled tracks with 20% gradients. We were nervous as the first challenge, the Koppenberg, loomed out of the driving rain. “I’ll walk this one”, I said. 

But the novelty of walking in a sportive wears off. We climbed everything else thrown at us – nine climbs in total, and last of all the Paterberg, our redemption for taking the easy route up the Koppenberg.

The next day the pros took over. The buses of the women’s team were accessible in a way the men’s World Tour teams are not, and we cycled freely among the cycling greats. Team Jumbo Visma left their bus and rolled to the start, with us following. 

On our final day the sun shone at last. The wind still raged but miraculously turned 180 degrees and became a cross-tailwind that blew us all the way back home. 

We had taken a beating. Our bikes were filthy and gritty. But we grinned as we boarded the ferry and shared our adventures of cobbles, chaos and calamitous weather. We would never fear cycling in the rain again