This was it. The time had arrived. Belgium’s biggest day of the biggest month of racing was finally here, the holiest of days falling on Easter Sunday no less and the church was overflowing with worshippers. Drunk, loud, super-hyped worshippers spread over a 260km diocese, all with their own personal gods who they hoped would rise above the rest. The Ronde van Vlaanderen really is that important.

Heading to our favoured pew on the Oude Kwaremont, we took our first feed at a small village to fuel us for the walk to the hub of the action. The crowds were even bigger and drunker than usual once we arrived at the main village about halfway up the seemingly endless (when you’re riding it) climb that usually casts the final vote of the cobbled conclave. The women would pass twice and the men three times, and we staked out a spot in front of the big screen and made sure we were sufficiently full of beer and frites. A DJ of sorts was giving it a bit of Belgian techno and the guys in front of us were giving it a bit of Belgian shape-cutting, keeping themselves and us entertained. Similar scenes were happening all over the muddy field during the afternoon and probably in a lot of other places along the race route I’d imagine. This is a party after all, with a bicycle race thrown in for good measure.

This was evident when a few of the guys noticed me taking some photos of them, and suddenly I was snapping group portraits on request. A particularly friendly character in a Tom Boonen mask with a convenient breathing hole for cigarettes got chatting to me and revealed that half of his group weren’t even cyclists but came for the atmosphere and the beer. One good turn deserves another and as my own beer buzz kicked in the opportunity for a cigarette reared its ugly head. Frank asked if I liked the music and when I revealed I was into a bit of tech/prog house we found some common ground, besides the wet one we were standing on. Throughout the afternoon he played me some tunes on his phone that he’d produced which were probably pretty good but with the cacophony of noise from the crowd, the commentary and old mate on the MacBook it wasn’t easy to give much more assessment than “nice”…

The last thing you expect to hear in a mass of people in a field in Belgium is someone saying your name, and after a confused double take I was stunned to see an old friend Chris from the UK now via Doha standing in front of me. We’d done this very thing on a couple of occasions about five or six years ago, and somehow we’d crossed paths again. He’d brought his family over for the weekend and had ridden the cyclo event the day before with his son, and was behaving himself a bit more than on the past trips.

All the while there was a bike race going on, actually two. As the screen showed that the riders were approaching the bottom of the climb, everyone jammed along the barriers to scream encouragement for the brief minute they rattled past, faces etched with grime from the morning’s rain and pain from the continual barrage of short, sharp bergs scattered over the flat, windswept farmland. I though there could possibly be a riot when two Nederlanders took out both the races, but instead there was appreciative applause for the victors. This was a party after all, and no-one wanted it to end badly (especially as the cops were already there).