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.

Finally in the UK!!!

Well it has been an amazing build up to the first World Cup, and at one stage I was certain that I was not going to make it.

I was scheduled to fly out on Sunday night but due to the volcanic ash from the Icelandic volcano all European and Uk flights were cancelled. A couple of us were trying to get into some of the southern European airports that were still open and then contemplating the massive overland journey to the UK. I’m so glad this option did not eventuate as carting a bike box and heavy luggage around train stations is HARD work and it would have been hugely expensive as the cost of land transport had tripled and was jam packed with all the drama of the volcano!
So eventually, after multiple bookings and changes and also a practice trip to the Melbourne airport on Monday night, (only to be told that Venice airport had since closed after we made the booking), I got onto a flight that left on Wednesday night arriving in Gatwick (London) which was extremely exciting and a huge relief.

All 5 of us in the TORQ team were originally scheduled to travel together but with all the flight upsets we were separated, all coming in at different times and into different airports, I landed in Gatwick, Kath and Ray came into Manchester, and Dan and Bec flew into Heathrow!

I have never been to the UK, let alone London, so the train trip to London and up to York was quite an experience! As it happened I was headed to the middle of London to Kings Cross Station in peak hour, this was full on and I didn’t make myself many friends by taking up 4 seats with my bike box and luggage while the rest of the train was packed like sardines! From Kings Cross I got on a train that took me 2 hrs north to Yorkshire, the trains go really fast over here, the 400+ km journey was over in no time!

The English countryside is beautiful, although it is cold and quite bleak, there is still something very pretty about it. Spring has just started, there are lots of baby lambs in the paddocks, daffodils growing on the side of the roads and trees starting to become green and leafy. The villages have heaps of character, they are very quaint and the buildings very old and generally made out of stone.

This is the the view from our cabin, and one of the many phesants that seem to roam around here, strange birds!!

This is the TORQ UK set up, quite impressive really, and it is is great to have a place to hang out and have some support while at the race!

These little contraptions are called 'Nomads'. They are portable bike wash systems that can be plugged into the cigarette lighter in your car so you can give your bike a wash when you have finished riding some muddy trails!!

A few of us enjoying a cool down in the English country side!

Since arriving we have spent a couple of days out on the course practicing and preparing for the race. It is a really fun course with a few tricky bits that keep you on your toes but it is by no means a technical track that requires a lot of skill, It has been beautiful dry sunny weather and it is forecast to be the same for tomorrows’ race day!

We are getting very efficient at packing and unpacking the van each day, it is quite a procedure!

Not Long Now!

Well the count down is finally on, 5 more days until I fly off to the UK to embark on another overseas World Cup racing experience.

It is a slightly shorter trip this year of about 5 weeks which will include 3 World Cup Races and a German National race.

The WC races are; #1 Dalby Forest in the UK, #2 Houffalize in Belgium, and #3 Offenburg In Germany.

These are the selection races that need to be completed in order to hopefully gain selection to the 2010 World Championships which will be held at Mont Sainte Anne, Canada, during the first week of September.

Our group is quite diverse, consisting pretty much of all the Aussies who will be racing WC's. We have banded together for our travel and accommodation arrangements, quite different to previous years where there has been a 'National Team' which no longer exists due to funding cuts.

So hopefully we will be leaving the cooler weather behind and hitting Europe at the onset of Spring and decent weather, although I hear it can still get pretty cold!!!

Stay tuned for more updates!!!