Features

Perhaps one of the most elegant attractions of cycling is the opportunity to be able to ride the very same bicycle that Mark Cavendish sprints to victory on, or like the one Bradley Wiggins rode to Tour de France success last year. You really can walk into a bike shop and ride away on bike that's almost identical. Try doing that in Formula One...

I’m stood on top of a hill, the sleety rain is coming in sideways, again, Jupiler beer is flowing freely, black-yellow-red flags snap damply in the wind and the same pattern is painted on the tarmac and people’s cheeks, but only where it hasn’t been washed off by the days regular showers, in both cases, the Bold Rooster is more common than the Flanders Lion, and I’ve just been given a drunken hug by Philippe Gilbert’s god-daughter, she’s even shown me her ID card to show they share the same surname and confirm some sort of provenance.

As you head out of Ypres towards Menen, stop and look at the inside of the gate. There are 54,896 names inscribed there, each a Commonwealth soldier whose body was never found or identified after World War One. There wasn’t enough room to fit all the names, so the remainder are elsewhere.