In the far south of The Netherlands, there’s a little protruding inland peninsula, bounded to the west by Belgium and to the east by Germany. This is South Limburg and it is essentially gravel-riding Mecca. With the perfect combination of hilly, wood-cloaked escarpments, wide-open plateaus and numerous steep-sided valleys, all smothered in an incredibly varied network of trails, it’s no wonder so many cyclists flock here each year to get their fill of gravel riding. The end of April this year was the Dutch King’s Birthday, but was also the date for the United in Gravel Weekender – a celebration of everything gravelly, which was held in Valkenburg, South Limburg. Olly escaped from behind his desk and joined in the fun.
Image courtesy of John Timmermans
“I see you’ve bought your monstrous mudflap again,” said Erwin. “What are you expecting? World War Three?” Apparently, mudguards (or fenders, as our American cousins call them) are really not a ‘thing’ in The Netherlands. Over the course of a few days I spent at the recent in Valkenburg at the United in Gravel Weekender, my gravel bike received some double takes, some bemused looks, a couple of comments along the lines of “You must be a Brit?” and one small group of middle-aged men who crossed the road to stare at it, then stood transfixed for a good minute, practically shaking their heads and tutting at my choice of talisman to ward off the evil gremlins of mud-caked-face-and-arse.
Looking around at the incredibly varied selection of bike-shaped objects being ridden throughout the weekend, it looked like any bike that could even vaguely be considered appropriate for gravel riding had reported for duty, but practically none had mudguards. Initially, I thought I would have the last laugh. Friday was scheduled to be a Test Event, with brands including Merida, J.Guillem, Orbea and Canyon bringing along some of their finest gravel bike offerings for the public to try for free. Unfortunately, a combination of a poor weather forecast and the fact the event was being held on the Friday before the annual King’s Day celebrations meant visitor numbers were somewhat lower than the organisers had hoped. The run-up to the event had seen unseasonably low temperatures and heavy rainfall, which meant large puddles were covering some of the lower-lying sections of the waymarked 9 kilometre test loop. As I headed out on an afternoon spin with gravel-fluencer Andrea who works in the Merida Bikes marketing team, I was initially feeling quite smug about my full mudguards and winter kit choices. However, as our ride went on, the temperature fluctuated from 7 degrees to 17 degrees and trails varied from wall-to-wall water to bone dry. The joy of spring in northern Europe! Despite the occasionally soggy conditions, the trails were still as fun as ever and we came back with big grins (and not too much mud, thanks to the mudguards) plastered on our faces.
After some pampering of bike and body, it was time for a visit to the Gravel Café Live – an evening of conversation with guests including locally-based pro gravel and MTB racer Tessa Neefjes, pro gravel racer Laurens Ten Dam and former amateur world road race champion Danny Nelissen, who is now the commercial manager at the Shimano Experience Centre, where the café talks were held.
Saturday morning dawned with some early sunshine, which hopefully augured well for a great day on the gravel bikes. Nearly 800 keen gravel riders had signed up for the King’s Day edition of the LtD Gravel Fest, an annual celebration of gravel riding. Nicely caffeinated thanks to the coffee-meisters at Il Magistrale, riders queued up for the super-efficient registration process before heading out on the morning loop. The route had been created by Guido Batens, who works for the event organiser and lives locally. It comprised an 81km morning loop and an optional additional 51km afternoon loop. In perfect keeping with the non-timed/party-pace attitude of the event, riders were free to set off at whatever time they liked between 8am and 9am. This helped spread the field out nicely, so the course never felt overly congested.
Planning a route for a gravel event is a really hard job. You have to try and juggle a myriad of often conflicting aims – you need to make sure the trails are appropriate for the expected number of participants, ensure the route fits appropriately with the overall level of difficulty for event, work out where to put in feed tops, check for potential local issues (road closures, local festivals, agricultural events), try and keep local residents and communities happy by routing the event away from areas of conflict, think about emergency access points, add in some ‘wow factor’ with great views or inspiring sections of trail and perhaps most importantly, try and have the route finish with a memorable section so that your participants go home with a positive overall impression. I’m happy to report the design team had done an amazing job. After a short section of urban riding, we hit the trails just outside Valkenburg and had a gentle warm-up on a flat vehicle-width trail next to the railway line. A few mud patches, some chunks of crushed limestone and the occasional early-morning dog walker to politely slalom around meant riders had to concentrate straight from the word go.
The route profile was a proper saw-tooth shape – short punchy climbs, a quick section of recovery, fast descent. And repeat. That was going to be the order of the day. The first climb, which came after only 5km was plenty punchy. The steeper middle section was ‘only’ 7%, but overnight rain had slicked the surface and with water runnels, tree roots and loose gravel to negotiate, not to mention a glut of riders all desperately trying to simultaneously seek out some under-tyre grip and undo their jacket zips, meant it required quite a bit of tongue-out concentration in places to stay upright.
A brief respite at the top with some residential paved road riding soon led onto what in my brain is archetypal South Limburg gravel riding – a super-fast, wide-open farm track with agricultural land on either side. Unlike much of the riding in the UK, trails in this part of The Netherlands generally don’t have gates at either end, so the route ‘flows’ perfectly and riders can carry their momentum from one section of trail to another. As the sun started to burn through the early morning cloud, I glanced back to see Andrea riding hands-free, soaking up the rays like a solar-powered battery in need of a re-charge. She eloquently summed up the feel of the route without saying a word.
As with any long gravel ride, particularly one where you haven’t plotted the route yourself, trying to visualise all of it afterwards is impossible. I have little vignettes that flicker across my closed eyelids – a section of nadgery singletrack littered with tree roots, a 180degree uphill turn on loose gravel that I recognised from previous rides in the area, passing a middle-aged chap on an ancient Surly Crosscheck complete with cantilever brakes and bar end shifters, a crazy-fast concrete downhill with speed bumps (where Andrea left me for dead...), big skies and riders everywhere displaying flashes of bright orange to celebrate the King’s Birthday.
“Is this really just for cyclists and walkers?” I asked a slightly bemused-looking Andrea? “Well, it is open to tractors too, but other than that, yes”. We had just been riding up a piece of segregated bike infrastructure that was genuinely better than anything in the whole of the UK! It had a billiard table smooth surface, was the same width as a standard two-lane road and was separated via a large grassy bank from the road itself. It’s not something that would get local gravel riders’ hearts fluttering, but to a tourist like me, it was gob-smackingly good. It’s also the default in The Netherlands. There appeared to be spectacularly well-thought-out paths everywhere for pedestrians and cyclists to enjoy. We’ll gloss over the slight randomness that moped riders can also use them of course…..
There are a number of unwritten rules in any organised cycling event. The ones that relate to food are as follows. A) You will forget at what distance the first feed stop is located about 10 seconds after you set off in the morning. B) You will become unfathomably starving precisely four minutes before you see the sign telling you that the feed stop is coming up. In that time, you will have rootled around in your jersey pockets and eaten anything you can find that looks even vaguely edible.
With spectacularly predictable timing, the morning feed stop arrived just after we finished eating the contents of our jersey pockets. Never mind, there’s always space for some more calories, right? Currant buns, cereal bars, fresh fruit, chocolate, cans of pop, water (and energy drink) and I’m sure plenty of other stuff that I have forgotten about was laid out in abundance for us. A constant stream of riders pulled up, filled up and headed back out. After a quick route check, we did the same.
The section between the first feed stop and lunch was generally flatter than the earlier part of the day, which meant the third immutable rule of cycling events kicked in – no matter what speed you ride at, a group of riders will most likely choose to sit on your wheel and shelter from the ever-increasing winds without offering to do some of the ‘work’ on the front. Andrea and I picked up our own mini-peloton at some point and then, despite the fact the event isn’t timed or competitive, we would try and drop them every time the trail turned vaguely technical. It was actually pretty fun - a kind of mixed nationality cat-and-mouse, some of the riders were pretty strong, but we were more technically competent, so our group concertinaed depending on the conditions under wheel.
As riders arrived back for lunch, the first thing to greet them was a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers proffering enormous slices of Limburgse Vlaai, a local apricot tart which is so delicious that even former gold medal winning Olympic cyclists such as Greg Van Avermaet will happily tuck into a large slice! The sun timed its re-entry perfectly and we managed to eat lunch outside without getting wet, before heading back out onto the trails once more. It was noticeable that there were less riders heading out for the afternoon lap than we had spotted in the morning, but they missed out – the afternoon route included some peachy trails!
More visual snippets from the afternoon – a small child being given a helping hand by a pedal-powered adult, a group of über-strong road riders realising that speed & fitness on tarmac don’t necessarily mean you could safely ride rutted muddy off-road sections at high speed, an elderly couple out for a genteel Saturday afternoon ride looking slightly surprised when a peloton of mud-splattered gravel riders race past.
The afternoon route was in the most part on more rolling terrain. This should have been great in that we’d done the majority of the climbing for the day, but the wind picked up significantly as the afternoon wore on. Fortunately, the route zigged and zagged impressively across the landscape, so for every minute spent battling into a headwind, there were sections of bliss where you suddenly felt like a pro-rider. The easy highlight of the afternoon for Andrea and I was a 400m section of woodland singletrack. Twisting and turning through broadleaf woodland like an eco-friendly roller coaster, the final section of the trail was a steep and screamingly fast section of singletrack which took riders over a blind crest and down through a leaf litter filled bowl. You could tell which of the riders had a mountain bike background by the peals of laughter, whoops of joy and big smiles across faces. Unfortunately it was over practically as soon as it began and with a cruel twist, the route then kicked steeply back up to the top of the same wooded hill that we had descended from.
A few fast (and quite headwindy) sections of trail later and we were at the top of the last descent. I remembered it from last year and although it’s not in the least bit technical, it was super-fast and had a 90-degree left-hand turn at one point. Everyone in our mini-peloton made it through unscathed and we plopped unceremoniously back out in the suburbs of Valkenburg. A short road spin to help cool down our leg muscles and we crossed the finish line – tired, mud-speckled (despite the mudguards) and happy.
The organisers had laid on the perfect finish line arrangements – a cold beer (or soft drink), courtesy of event sponsors Kwaremont, complimentary bike wash courtesy of event sponsors Dynamic and the grand finale – a very generously stocked tombola, which everyone received a free ticket for when they signed on.
That was Saturday done and dusted. The Ltd Gravel Fest was the perfect inclusion in the United in Gravel Weekend – the organisers got the balance between fun, challenging and welcoming spot on. With fortunately decent weather, slick organisation and a happy, relaxed crowd, it was a great way to spend the day.
Of course, the weekend wasn’t over yet – there was still the little matter of the UCI Limburg Gravel Fondo on the Sunday to take part in (or to watch from the sidelines). If you’d like to find out what went on, check out our story here.