Bergs and cobbles might be what spring to mind when you think about Flanders and that was certainly the inspiration for this tour despite the fact that I can't manage sharp hills and I dislike cobbles. Just so we all know where we are, Flanders is the Flemish/Dutch-speaking region of Northern Belgium in contrast to Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Southern Belgium; a third smaller region is Brussels and its surroundings. You may be wondering who speaks Flemish and its a fair question as the word Flemish can be used to refer to the Dutch spoken in Flanders or any number of non-standard geographical variants. Oh, then there is the small region in the South East where German is the primary language.
Bergs are the notorious short sharp hills that with the notorious cobbles define bike racing in Flanders. Names like Koppenberg, Patenberg and Muur van Geraardsbergen will be familiar to those who follow cycle racing. In France the climbs can be long with manageable gradients from 5% to 10%. Belgium didn't adopt the sensible French limit on gradients and the Koppenberg though only comprising a mere 63m of total ascent will achieve that in 550m with an 11% average and 200m of 16-20% gradient. Gradients like these see the professionals get off and carry their bikes if they are stalled by riders in front of them. Muur is Dutch for wall which provides an indication of the climbs.
Cobbles are what the original Belgium roads were made of and though there was a programme of highway improvements that applied tarmac this loss of tough cobbles to race over was noted and a group created to help protect the remaining cobbled sections. The word cobble may be misleading as in Belgium they are square or rectangular blocks in contrast to the rounded cobbles of the English market town.
Take a look here on the climbfinder website to see what delights are in store for the cyclist in the Flemish Ardennes which I tackle early in my anticlockwise tour. The climbfinder.com website even offers up a tour to take in many climbs in what I suspect they expect you to complete in a day. I do a spot check and see my tour detours around the base of the Muur van Geraardsbergen so I'll need to plan in any attempts at climbing bergs.
For ease of navigation and planning I have picked a recognised cycle route. Visit Flanders is a good starting point and this website directs you to the Flanders By Bike website which includes a range of tours including the Vlaanderen route (VLAANDERENROUTE) which combines the best of the smaller routes and is the one I'm doing. It also includes a planning tool which allows you to pick a start point for each day, pick intermediate points on the route until you have reached your preferred daily distance and a suitable stopover location where you can search for accommodation and then fine-tune distances and available affordable accommodation. This planning tool uses the local names so it took me a while to realise I would be passing through Ypres as that appears as Ieper. Though Flanders is well served with modern hostels these don't fit well with the tour so I used a mix of hotels and B&B accommodation. Hostels would work well if you organised a tour around the hostel location.
The 955km tour of Flanders will take me 15 days of cycling with 3 days off towards the end wherw I will have one day in each of Antwerp, Ghent and Brugges. The total ascent is 4,050m which is an average of 64km (40 miles) of distance and a modest 270m of ascent each day.
I like to inject some difference in the tours I undertake and having camped earlier in the year this tour will be a lighter bike ride so I have the option of tackling the bergs which would be ridiculous with a bike loaded with camping gear. Although Belgium has campsites the climate isn't the best for camping and the availability of campsites on my route isn't ideal.
To get to the Flanders route I'll take the train to Dover, ferry to Dunkirk then it is a two-hour bike ride up to the Belgium border and the town of De Panne; 45 minutes up the coastal route will get me to my circular tour of Flanders.