Anyone who’s done the Tour of Flanders Cyclo – the sportive that takes place the day before the Belgian Monument – will know it’s hard. Following this year’s edition, we unearthed video of Londoner Joff Summerfield tackling it on his penny farthing, now here’s another one of a Brussels-based bike courier doing so on a cargo bike.
The rider’s no slouch either – he’s dropping people on road bikes on some of the cobbled hellingen, or hills, that characterise the race. According to the video, the three entrants from courier company PedalBXL made sure they included cobbles and climbs on their daily delivery routes to get themselves in shape for the event.
Pedal goes Ronde! from ryan le garrec on Vimeo.
We’ve covered the courier company before – they featured in this thought-provoking 20-minute film from 2012, called Brussels Express, about cycling in what is described as “Europe’s most congested city.”
If you haven’t seen it before, it’s well worth watching – and even if you have, it deserves a second look.
Brussels Express from Sander Vandenbroucke on Vimeo.
Born in Scotland, Simon moved to London aged seven and now lives in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds with his miniature schnauzer, Elodie. He fell in love with cycling one Saturday morning in 1994 while living in Italy when Milan-San Remo went past his front door. A daily cycle commuter in London back before riding to work started to boom, he's been news editor at road.cc since 2009. Handily for work, he speaks French and Italian. He doesn't get to ride his Colnago as often as he'd like, and freely admits he's much more adept at cooking than fettling with bikes.