Club news
Monts de Flandres – Franco Belgian border Sunday 13th Sep
26 September 2009
Eight of us made the trip over to the Monts de Flandres randonee last weekend. This year we stayed the Saturday night at one of Louise’s well researched hideaways, an Auberge in the marshlands to the west of St Omer. Cheap and extremely cheerful with a fine selection of Flandrian food and beer to fuel the weekend’s exertions. This was also a good location for a flat, if somewhat windy, ride on Saturday afternoon to prepare us for the big one next morning.
Sunday was an early start with an hours drive to Lille ahead of us. It was made just a little earlier still by Kev and Sam’s enthusiasm to get going combined with some thin hotel walls. No alarm call necessary and we were all up well before the peaceful marshlands echoed with cock crow and birdsong – thanks lads.
This years route was based on all the usual climbs that straddle the Franco-Belgian border – Monts Rouge and Noir, Mont Cassel, Mont des Cats, the Kemmelberg and Monteberg. But the route linking them was different this year and we approached some from very new but equally challenging directions . The Kemmelberg, in particular, used a much easier ascent from last years cobbled 1 in 4 side while they managed to find a long circuit up to the panorama at Cassel that was never ending.
As ever with the organisation provided with URFA Lille, controls, feed stations and signeage were all impeccable and somehow they never tire of the “novelty” of having an English club riding. We are still treated as special guests despite this being our third or fourth participation!
Every one of our riders was going strongly all day, each enjoying different moments of glory as they got it right on one climb or another. Vince went off on an early flier with a small group of locals but we left him to it and fate brought him back to us for the rest of the day at the first control. Chris Steven’s form was a bit up and down, so we let Ian Bibby take him away up the road to gain some ground at one point while we rode as a steady group some way behind. That was never a good idea. The result was that we swept past a floundering Stevens in no mans land and never saw Ian again as he’d used the situation to escape unseen off the front early and deny Kev and me our chance to work him over on the run –in. All theory of course, as it turned out, I had jelly legs over the last three miles or so and would have been watching any sprinting into Lille from some distance!
Two spills. Sam chose a tight slippery corner on a Belgian farm track to dance a merry tango with his machine before visiting the turnips but it was all fairly slow speed and all the funnier for being the new boy.
Sad to report that Nikki Hunt fared less well, having to take evasive action when the group stopped unexpectedly. She chose a lay-by as her escape route and, at first, it looked like a good decision but the gravel surface and lack of run –off gave her nothing to play with . A parked lorry trailer ended her excursion far too abruptly for comfort. Nikki was certainly lucky to have been wearing a helmet for this one but injured her arm and back as her 8 stone frame hit 10 tonnes of immoveable object at speed. It was a great relief to see her eventually on her feet but the last ten miles her for her had to be done in the back of a car. We all hope to see her back in the saddle and feeling better soon.