Went to Ninove Belgium for Easter weekend with Norm and the Oxford Tri gang. Sadly I did not get any photos, so there will be just a brief description of the trip here.
We took the ferry from Dover to Calais, overall about a 4 hour trip. We arrived in Ninove Friday evening just in time for the rain. Found ourselves a great place for a large pasta dinner and settled into our studio, all 10 of us, for the night.
Saturday morning, the fun began. We were in Ninove to participate in the Ronde van Vlaanderen/Tour des Flandres (official, wiki). One of the original cobbled classics (with classic climbs, i.e.: Koppenberg, Muur), we participated the day before the pros raced.
Climbing the Muur (photo from “Muur climb” wiki page). We had crowds along the climbs when we did the ride too, it was fantastic!
We were on the course for about 7 hours on the 160km ride. It rained for about 3 hours near the beginning and was quite cold, but the day ended warm and sometimes sunny. Besides some brake issues on my bike, everything went smoothly for the whole trip.
The food stops had Belgian waffles!
Good times, would do it again.
April 17, 2010 at 20:43 |
[...] in U.K. or France… or…. « Ronde van Vlaanderen [...]
April 27, 2010 at 08:38 |
[...] usually don’t spend all of our time on hills climbing. The ride had many similarities to the Tour of Flanders…. long, lots of climbs (but this ride had no flats), and rained for the first couple hours, [...]