Kapelmuur, Geraardsbergen, Belgium, April 2012. Photo Richard Hoskin

For 364 days of the year, at least until 2012, the smooth sealed climb of the Tenbosse doesn’t really exhibit any redeeming features besides the fact that you know what’s coming up in about ten kilometres. It wasn’t often that the script of the Ronde van Vlaanderen played out here, but that’s not to say it is benign; Johan Museeuw launched his race-winning attack on it in 1998, but it was further up the road where he cemented it, sealed and delivered with a 53 tooth monstering over the kassien that lines the squares and streets of Geraardsbergen.

It looks like a nice town, this, but in three previous visits there was no thought––or indeed chance––of sightseeing, of wandering the narrow alleys you spy off to the side of the wide carriageway that deposits you in the centre of town. Traffic comes at you from all sides, pedestrians give a wide berth as they know why you are here, on a bicycle, in April. They may not share the same reverence for their steep, rough track to the famous chapel at the top of the hill, but they certainly understand the importance of it in the cycling world. They know that you are here for the experience of riding, and suffering, on the very roads our heroes did. They stay out of your personal hell and let you continue unabated, maybe even offer a word of encouragement or a wry, knowing smile as you pass, head down and expressionless but for a gaping mouth and blank eyes.

It’s hard not to get overly excited and want to ride the Muur as if you were the Lion of Flanders himself. This is not recommended. The last time up here in 2015, over 100 kilometres already under our belts, we hit the second of the plazas at a rapid rate. Then someone went. No-one else was willing to go any harder, not this early, not in the square. We would have to wait, whether we liked it or not. The road narrows to almost a goat track as you enter the canopy of trees, and the cobbles take on a rougher and more haphazard persona. The pitch rises, and keeps rising. Into the red. From previous ascents, I knew that keeping my brain in my head and my heart in my chest was the best plan of attack. Or in this case, defence.

The left hand bend just after the houses disappear from the landscape signals impending doom. 22%. It’s not a nice number, not here, on these stones. With a bit of recovery time banked, prey in sight and visibly weakening, the blood I can taste is not only mine. 39-27 are as cruel numbers as 22, there are no more cogs to come no matter how many times you thrust that lever left, hoping for a phantom click. It never comes. The click is all in your legs and lungs now, the lowest gear you have is inside you. The left side of the road draws you across, inviting you to its smoother path, still punishing yet deceiving the brain that this is your best option, that you can go faster if you stay here. Tempo is everything, those who accelerated hard earlier are now slowing, like they are reversing back down the slope, gravity holding them in limbo as I seem to defy it, if only in my head. It’s the only place I exist right now.

They stand at the edges, leaning on their bikes, beaten down by the steepness and roughness and their own internal nemeses, and it spurs you to stay at it. The next left hander places you on shallower, hallower ground, and you feel like you have been afforded an almighty push from the heavens. Acceleration, a seemingly forgotten phenomenon moments ago, is not only possible but mandatory; this is where the greats have ridden before you, this is where you are now in control of your own greatness, the one that exists only in you, only for you. This is your own Ronde moment. The most famous right hand bend in cycling is before you. The chapel and the cross symbolise a moment, not for their outwardly religious connotations, but the inwardly ones. You say a prayer, thank the cycling gods, and worship at the altar of the suffering. Atheism is forgotten here.

Turn down the bombastic music and deal with the terrible video quality, and bask in a big ring bruising of a bastardly berg…