Life in Bourcy

The place where we are staying is beautiful, it is not flash but it has a lot of character and is very practical! As a group of cyclists we are pretty happy when we find a place with a well decked out kitchen, a washing machine and at least a couple of toilets!! This place has it all, our group has grown now to about 10, and it is nice to be in a place that can cater for all of us!!

Our farm house!

This is the bike shed, heaps of room!

The team photo before our fist ride in Belgium



I am always still blown away by how old everything is here. We are in an old farm house in a very small village called Bourcy, it pretty much consists of a handful of similar farm houses that service the surrounding properties. The stone work is beautiful and this is very typical of this area, there are pretty much no modern buildings or residences to be seen. The country side is beautiful, the paddocks are amazingly green and lush and the cows are the most well feed and good looking cows I have ever seen!





I had been preparing myself for some horridly cold and wet weather, as in previous years the race here has been in pretty testing conditions. Amazingly Belgium has turned it on for us, each day has been blue skies and sunshine, not hot by any means but very pleasant none the less. I think this is all about to change though, the forecast is for very cold wet weather, should makes things very interesting! We are situated a little distance from Houffalize (which is the village where the race is held) but from our back yard there is a bike path that takes us all the way into the town, it is great, I’m sure it is a rail trail as the gradient is quite gradual and flat all the, a perfect way to warm up before hitting the race course!



The Houffalize course is one of the oldest on the World Cup circuit, apparently they have consistently hosted a World Cup race here every year for the last 20 years. It has always been renowned to be the hardest of the courses in terms of it’s climbing. The race starts right in the heart of the village in the main street. The legendary start loop goes straight up a very steep street with a 19% gradient for about 400m, this opens big gaps in the field as the better climbers burn everyone else off and sprint for the start of the single track at the top.




Me looking very relaxed on the 19% start loop, i'm sure it will be a different matter on Sunday!


This particular climb is used in the Leige-Bastonga which is one of the bigger of the spring classics on the professional road racing scene. You can see the names of Frank and Andy Schleck written on the road, this is pretty much a hometown race for them as they don’t live far from here, and the support would be pretty strong for here for these boys!
It is great having the course through the middle of the village, during training sessions it is a bit of a treat to re-group and finish with a coffee at one of the many cafés.