Stavelot, Belgium

When I stopped at the tourist office in Stavelot to ask the way to the monument to Eddy Merckx at the summit of a climb outside the town, the woman at the desk said to simply follow the road beside the office. It would cross a river and then begin a steep climb of one kilometer where I would find what I was looking for. 

 Then she showed me a picture of it. A plaque on the corner of the monument listed his major triumphs—three World Championships, five wins of The Tour and the Giro, seven of Milan-San Remo and five of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. There was no mention though of the equally, if not more, prestigious Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders, which he also won multiple times.

I was back in the French half of Belgium and it didn’t care to acknowledge the great races in the Flemish portion of the country, where winning its one-day Tour of Flanders stands as a greater accomplishment to many Flandrians than winning The Tour de France. If the monument had been in Flanders it might have ignored the Liège race, since it takes place in French-speaking Belgium.  

Residents of the two halves of the country find curious ways of dissing each other. At some point in the not too distant past trains in one half of the country stopped making announcements in the language of the other half of the country, so the other followed suit.  There is sentiment on both sides of having their own countries. It would almost be more logical for Flanders to be absorbed by the Dutch and the French Belgians meld into France, since both halves are so akin to these neighbors, but that is a concept few would cotton to.

I fed the presumed prejudices of the woman at the tourist office and said, “The roads they make the riders ride in those races in Flanders are straight out of medieval times, rocky cobbled paths through fields.  It’s like going back to the Middle Ages. They live like peasants over there.”  

“We like it better over here,” she replied with a smile.

The Merckx monument was my second of the day honoring a former Belgian World Champion.  I had passed another to Stan Ockers, who won the 1955 title, twelve years before Merckx’s first.  He died in a track competition in Antwerp in 1956.  His monument was erected in 1957 at the summit of the mile-long, eleven-per cent Côte des Forges, where he had made his move to win Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1955.  The climb actually levels off at his monument ten miles from Liège. His statue is noteworthy as being the first in Belgium erected of a cyclist.  Until then that honor had been reserved for statesmen.

Between the Ockers and Merckx monuments I went through Rouchamps, which had named a small plaza on its outskirts by a cluster of apartment buildings for Philippe Gilbert, the last of 18 Belgians to have won the World Championship in 2012.  The 18 Belgians account for 26 World Championships, the most of any country.  Italy is next with 18, then France with 8.  Gilbert grew up in a nearby town. There was little likelihood of seeing him out training as has taken up residence in the tax haven of Monaco, as have many cyclists.  He’s still racing, but wasn’t selected by his Belgian team to ride in this year’s Tour even though he’s a former stage winner and quite popular in Belgium.

A few days earlier I sought out another monument to a Belgian World Champion, Jean-Pierre Monseré, a mile outside the town of Lille on the road to Gierle.  It was at the spot where he was hit by a car and died during a race at the age of 22 in 1971 while World Champion.  He won the World Championships between two of Merckx’s wins and could have become a household name if his career hadn’t  ended prematurely. He was one of the youngest of World Champions, along with Lance Armstrong. 

The day after my venture off on bike paths that took my through a lake and up into the trees I passed through Borgloon, which had its own special attraction for cyclists—an eighteen-mile loop that linked seven works of art in the countryside by artists from around the world.  None were by Andy Goldsworthy, who has an array of works around Digne-les-Baines on the fringe of the Alps that Janina and I visited two years ago, that may have inspired the idea for this project that came along in 2012, well after Goldsworthy’s array of cairns and rebuilt shepherd’s huts.  Not being a weekend there were only a handful of others seeking them out, including a group of a dozen women on Vespas being led by a guide.

Among the works is a one hundred foot high see-through church by the Belgian architectural duo Gijssels Van Vaerenbergh entitled “Reading Between the Lines.”  Perched on a rise surrounded by agricultural land of grains, it could only be reached by foot or bike on a narrow path.

The Scottish artist Aeneas Wilder contributed a wooden cylinder of slats that provides a magnificent 360 degree view of the landscape.  Wilder intends the experience of walking the interior circumference to transport one to being in a monastery. 

Tucked in a narrow lane of plane trees surrounded by fields of grain were four tree tents by the Dutch artist Dré Wapenaar, who specializes in such structures. They can accommodate up to four and go for 70 euros a night with a fifteen euro breakfast optional.

Among the pleasures of biking around a land where the bicycle is revered are the totems erected to honor them.  Besides the many bikes in people’s yards with a basket of flowers on the handlebars and over the rear wheel are striking renditions of the bike.  Over-sized bikes are popular.  One in front of an auto-mechanic’s garage outside of Liège almost looked rideable.  It did have a chain and the tires were inflated.

This in a roundabout was meant simply to be regarded, perhaps on bent knee.

A community went to more than a little effort to erect an arch of bikes and fill a field with a peloton closing in on it.

These gave me a small taste of what awaits me along The Tour route in the days to come, where such installations and tributes will abound. I am always eager to see what new creations people have dreamed up. It is a relief that The Tour is finally upon me.  My five-weeks of training, riding some 2,500 miles around France and Belgium, has gone well.  The legs are ready.  I can gauge them by how they responded to the two and three mile climbs of the Ardennes the past couple of days.  It’s the first long climbs they have been subjected to in a couple of weeks.  I have been able to power up them with vigor.  The legs are no longer fatigued at day’s end.  They want to keep going, as they will get to until nine or ten when The Tour commences.

Tomorrow it’s back to Brussels for the presentation of the teams, always a grand affair in an outdoor space attended by thousands, who will fill a plaza and line the city streets along a fenced off route that the teams will ride to reach the stage and then the streets that they will continue on for a spell afterwards, cheered all the way.  I am glad to have scouted it all out, including a campground eight miles from the city center.  No worries.