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Oliver Schick
pascalo
@Brommers
Last weekend @Cycliste and I went to Oudenaarde for the Retro Ronde van Vlaanderen. Things kicked off on Saturday morning, with a quick 29km ride featuring the infamous Paterberg and Koppenberg cobbled climbs. They used to form part of the main route, but this didn't this year, hence the extra ride on Saturday morning. After cruising along the canals outside Oudenaarde we made it to the climbs.
@Cycliste managed to ride up both climbs thanks to her Cyclotouriste 38/26 chainrings. I made it up despite my Campag 52/42 rings. Here's our bikes at the top of the Paterberg:
Mine is the Hetchins (aka The Bike That Taste Forgot) and @Cycliste's is the teeny Roberts next to it.
On Saturday afternoon there was short circuit racing on a very tight 130m circuit laid out in the town square. The format was for everyone to do a 3 lap time trial on the course (2 at a time, but the only relevant issue was the times) and then the 16 fastest geared bikes to go through to 3 lap pursuit-style races. We didn't make it out of qualifying. @Cycliste's excuse was that she just wanted to sit in the sunshine and drink beer, so didn't try very hard. Mine was that my left foot came out of my pedal off the start, so I lost a lot of time while I fumbled around trying to poke my shoe into an unaccustomed toe-strap. Anyway, we were out, so drank lots of beer and watched the racing, with excellent multi-lingual commentary from the Master of Ceremonies who turned out to be the dapper chap dressed in tweed who was the only other guest at the tiny B&B we were staying at who we'd met at breakfast. Here's me wheezing and kaflumping round the circuit.
Sunday was the main event, the Retro Ronde itself. There were a variety of different lengths of courses, so obviously @Cycliste and I went for the longest one at 160km, which meant an 8.30am start. We were soon dropped by pretty much everyone else doing the 160km course, partially because @Cycliste is terrified by the almost complete uselessness of the Dura Ace brakes on her Roberts, partially because she was the only woman doing the 160km event and struggled to hold the pace on the fast flat bits, and partially because while @Cycliste is a strong rider she is glacially slow on cobbles. I did the Good Boyfriend thing and waited. Did I mention the cobbles? There were cobbles.
And gravel. And windmills.
We caught up with some of the other people doing the 160km course at the second feed stop, at which there was another windmill.
It had a sign outside saying 'Open' so we went to have a look around, after having tried the dark red fruit juice which turned out to be a mixture of apple and beetroot. Bleugh. We ended up having the full guided tour of the inside of the windmill (which was busy turning away), including the very top where the main driveshaft from the sails connects to the grinding stones.
It was fascinating, while at the same time utterly terrifying as there were no safety rails, guards or barriers whatsoever, and you got the distinct impression that all the wooden wheels, teeth and gears weren't going to stop no matter which body part you managed to get stuck in them. Really enjoyable though.
After that it was more cobbles
more gravel, more hills and some excellent food stops, the last one featuring free beer which is always a bonus. After a long but enjoyable day in the saddle we rolled back into Oudenaarde.
All in all a very enjoyable weekend, and a properly good ride on the Sunday.
tl;dr Did Retro Ronde, rode old bikes, drank beer, all good.