In Flanders the Tour of Flanders is less a bike race than a yearly civic argument about who suffered best on cobbles. First run in 1913, it has finished in Oudenaarde since 2012, after the last savage kicks of the Oude Kwaremont and Paterberg. The town now keeps the whole religion under one roof at the Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen on the Markt: old bikes, old films, and the quiet understanding that for one Sunday in April this modest Scheldt town is the center of the cycling universe.
You can’t be a cyclist and not know of the Spring Classics in Belgium. This is in Oudenaarde, just south of Ghent. It is a museum honoring the Tour of Flanders.
Super epic to be here and see the history.
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