Leisure Reports

Why would any sane person spend a day of his summer holidays cycling 140 K with an ascent of 4400 metres in the middle of a roasting Italian summer. Halfway up the Passo de Giau the answer is startlingly obvious. No sane person would even dream of it. The gradient is 14 %, the sun is beating down, there is no breeze and there is no shade. Above you is wave after wave of switchbacks without seeming end. Below you...you do not care what is below you.  It is  then you realize that you are a little mad......

With Liège-Bastogne-Liège completed, Luke GJ Potter and Eugène “Skil” Dillon go to Flanders. During their Driedaagse de Gendt, they complete Gent-Wevelgem in Flanders Fields and the Philippe Gilbert Classic. Waffle sampling continues for our brave hero.

Luke GJ Potter joined a sortie to Belgium at the end of April. His first goal was to complete Liège-Bastogne-Liège. All Aboard the Hype Train and read about his adventures build up to the first stop; Liège.

The alarm went off at half four in the morning, I had my porridge and hit the road, meeting Luke GJ outside his place at five. We cycled across the outskirts of Ghent. By the hill at the big art centre called “Vooruit”, there were loads of people stumbling across or along the road.....

It’s 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning in late April. The Merry Ploughboy’s a re-assuring presence on the mountain as it first comes into view. In its streetlights I make out Storm Hannah’s detritus: Felled branches dancing in its gusts, floodwaters latticing the road....