Cyclist
Big Ride: A Tuesday in Hell in Roubaix
It’s 4am on a late-February morning when my alarm shocks me awake. In a daze, I grab the few items I’m going to need – helmet, gels, spotlessly white shoes, passport – and try to prepare myself for the challenge ahead.
It was a year ago that two of my Cyclist colleagues successfully managed to travel to Belgium, do a ride that took in many of the classic bergs of the Tour of Flanders, and get home again in a day. The challenge facing me repeats the out-and-back-in-a-day format, but with an altogether more demanding ride: the final 100km of Paris-Roubaix.
London is cold, dark and unsettlingly quiet. There are only a handful of trains humming gently in St Pancras Station by the time I link up with Laurence, my companion for the trip, at a sobering 5:30am. We’re travelling light as, perhaps to the relief of our own bikes, Eurostar doesn’t permit bikes to be taken on board to Lille, the closest Eurostar stop to the dreaded cobbles. We’ll be picking up bikes from our buddy Pascal at the start of our ride in the town of Valenciennes, about 40 minutes south of Lille.
Our train departs at 7.04am. We part ways with British soil and within half an hour emerge into the fog of northern France, and less than an hour after that we pull into the station at Lille. From there it’s a short walk across to Lille Flandres station where we hop onto a double-decker train to take us onwards to Valenciennes.
As the jingling tones of the station intercom fade, we collect our bikes. Ahead of us lies 100km of one of cycling’s most celebrated one-day races, over 30% of which is cobbled.
No time for a warm-up
We’ve barely started before we find ourselves in the ominous shadows of the Fosse Arenberg’s steel mining towers. Ahead we catch our first glimpse of the Arenberg Forest, which lingers at the end of the dead-straight road into Hell.
Local Tour de France stage winner Jean Stablinski – who worked in the mines here as a teenager – first proposed the now iconic Arenberg Forest to race organisers. After a successful debut in 1968, the brutal stretch of pavé became an instant classic, later dubbed the Trench of Arenberg by French writer Pierre Chany, who likened it to something from the First World War. Accordingly, the trench has a five-star difficulty rating, the highest on offer.
We’ve been told that the crown in the centre of the road is the cleanest line to take as leaves and moss coat the road’s edges. In reality, there’s not much time to think about trajectory as the pavé sadistically throws us around its bone-shattering path.
Unlike the pros, who throttle down this sector at close to 60kmh on race day, we take a more cautious approach, although we have to keep putting the power down just to be able to control our bikes. The temptation to swerve off the cobbles and onto the dog walker-friendly track along the side of the road is powerful, but that’s not an option open to the pros on race day, as the track is cordoned off to separate riders from fans and prevent riders from plunging into the boggy stream that runs parallel.
Miraculously we make it to the end of the Arenberg Trench with no horror stories to take back home, and after a 2km cacophony of clattering we’re spat out onto the smoothness of a wide-open carriageway.
With gritted teeth
There’s no time for the Arenberg-induced adrenaline to simmer down. The cobbles come thick and fast, starting at Wallers’ Pont Gibus. This sector, named in honour of two-time Paris-Roubaix winner Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, is known for its broken bridge, often mobbed by cycling tifosi in April. We’re given an impromptu opportunity to appreciate the graffiti-coated structure after being halted by the level crossing that intersects the pavé.
Back in our rhythm, we get funnelled onto the longest continuous stretch of cobbles on the race parcours at Hornaing à Wandignies-Hamage. The 3.7km sector is four stars in difficulty, mainly due to its length and reputation for untimely punctures. The occasional gutter or T-junction provides some respite from the relentless vibrations, but roadside puddles and bumps keep us on our toes as rear wheels jerk and slither on the slippery surface.
‘Were the road builders actually trying to do a bad job?’ Laurence remarks as we finally exit the sector with our bikes somehow still intact. He’s not far off – these days the cobblestones are preserved by volunteers from Les Amis du Paris-Roubaix, who pride themselves in keeping the pavé in a pristine state of brutality. According to them, it costs roughly €5,000 a year to look after each cobbled sector.
We trundle across French plains, passing through a string of villages all chosen from the same architectural Argos catalogue. Water towers and industrial funnels dominate the skyline, adding a strange charm to this bleak landscape.
The roads have been quiet. After 30km we’ve only seen a handful of cyclists, albeit one of them was Lidl-Trek’s Jasper Stuyven, who whizzed past us on the three-star Warlaing à Brillon sector. Otherwise our only company is a farmer who gives us a nod of appreciation – not jealousy – when we pass by with limbs jiggling and oaths issued.
The curses continue to Orchies, a town rebuilt almost in its entirety following the First World War. Its bike lanes are smooth and welcoming, so it is with a slight sense of betrayal that we are guided away from them towards the next sector of cobbles: the Chemin des Abattoirs.
Mathieu van der Poel chose this stretch to launch a stinging attack in 2024, a move that would become the longest successful solo effort in 30 years. By the time he passed the mosaic-clad abattoir at the end of the sector, he was clear of the pack. For us, though, the abattoir is merely a reminder of our own tormented flesh and the cruelty meted out to dumb animals like ourselves.
Five-star service
We relish a smooth 8km of provincial roads before reaching Mons-en-Pévèle, a five-star cobbled sector that lacks the notoriety of its high-profile counterparts but is no less challenging for it.
First crossed by the pros in 1978, Mons-en-Pévèle has featured in each edition since 2001. It’s not the pavé here that makes this sector tough, but the fact that it uncharacteristically ramps up to 3% for a few hundred metres. Of course this is not a road that will feature in Cyclist’s collection of Classic Climbs any time soon, but the incline reduces speed, making the mud-coated stones even harder to negotiate when coupled with the extra horsepower. With a slippery layer of earth lathered on the cobbles, a controlled whip of the back wheel is required to get past bumpy ramps and corners upright.
The tarmac soon reappears, granting both us and our rear derailleurs a fleeting moment of respite. By now the fatigue is setting in and every kilometre of unruffled ground feels like a blessing. No matter how many forsaken sectors we tick off, it never gets any easier.
Often in Paris-Roubaix, the race’s final phase is signposted by the Moulin-de-Vertain. It’s usually spotted by TV helicopters that capture the windmill dressed in branded banners to honour the so-called Queen of the Classics. Today, though, there’s a big top, four industrial-size lorries and a herd of camels and miniature horses stretched across this patch of hallowed cycling ground. Even the poor fibreglass cobblestone monument is tucked away behind a waft of gaudily painted circus vehicles.
In response, we waddle down the embankment past the clown convoy, only to be sent into crosswinds cutting across fields littered with concrete bunkers left behind from France’s wartime Maginot Line.
Following the greying skies, we eventually crawl onto the legendary Carrefour-de-l’Arbre. As the race’s final five-star sector it’s undoubtedly the most decisive, coming within the final 20km. Once we leave the tarmac we’re jolted through four 90° bends before ripping into a long, straight section, luckily complemented by a slightly smoother gutter to the side that allows us to avoid the pavé’s steep crest.
Rush hour
After the Carrefour-de-l’Arbre, only a slither of cobbled kilometres remains on the profile. The pros would usually consider the race done and dusted by now, but in spite of our blistered hands and rattled biceps, we lock ourselves in for the interminable drag through Roubaix’s suburbs. With lights twinkling and progress obstructed by the home-time traffic, we turn onto the Avenue Alfred Motte to meet one last bumpy challenge.
It’s easy to miss the final sector. Apart from one weekend in April, it’s an unremarkable car park lodged in the avenue’s central reservation. After all the five-star sectors we’ve endured, this feels as smooth as a baby’s backside. Some of the cobbles here have even been taken out and replaced by Hollywood Walk of Fame-style slabs to honour the race’s victors, paving the way towards what now looks like a very closed Vélodrome André-Pétrieux.
Having pleaded with the caretaker, the hallowed gates are unlocked for us to complete the obligatory lap and a half that has concluded the race for half a century. We avoid any hiccups through the floodlit banking to launch an exhausted dash down the home straight. There’s no cobblestone trophy waiting for us, but Laurence hoofs past to claim victory with no photo finish required.
After a sportsmanlike handshake, we notice the clock nearing 7pm. There’s no time to freshen up in the iconic Roubaix Velodrome showers before the last London-bound train leaves nearby Lille at 9.30pm local time. Instead a wet wipe shower and a wolfed down bowl of pasta will have to suffice if we are to make our Eurostar ride back to the big smoke in time.
Waking from a post-pavé snooze under the Channel, we step back onto British soil at 9.57pm, after nearly 16 hours on the move. Paris-Roubaix in a day? Mission accomplished.
Queen of the Classics
How Paris-Roubaix was crowned
Regarded as the toughest race on the cycling calendar, Paris-Roubaix was founded at the end of the 19th century by Roubaix-based textile merchants Théodore Vienne and Maurice Perez, who were looking to promote the town’s velodrome. Parisian newspaper Le Vélo was brought in as organiser-turned-sponsor, initially hoping to forge a warm-up race for its flagship Classic, Bordeaux-Paris.
The deal was done and the inaugural edition was scheduled for April 1896. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning – half the peloton didn’t show up to the start line at Le Vélo’s offices in Paris’s Porte Maillot, including future Tour de France founder Henri Desgranges, and those that did were blighted by stray farm animals that roamed free on the course. The eventual winner, Germany’s Josef Fischer, overcame a collision with a horse to ride into the old Roubaix velodrome caked in blood and dirt with an advantage of almost half an hour.
Almost two decades later, Paris-Roubaix picked up the nickname ‘Hell of the North’ following the First World War. After riding through war-torn France, still scarred by four years of combat, riders would finish the race coated in mud like soldiers.
It wasn’t until after the Second World War, however, that the race found a niche in its gruelling pavé. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the iconic five-star sectors in Arenberg, Mons-en-Pévèle and Carrefour-de-l’Arbre were adopted, creating one of the most iconic courses in pro cycling.
In turn, Paris-Roubaix garnered Monument status towards the end of the 20th century and it now holds the mantle as the sport’s most prestigious and brutal one-day test. Riders to have won its coveted cobblestone trophy include Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Sean Kelly, Tom Boonen and Peter Sagan. This April, Mathieu van der Poel will be looking to win his third Paris-Roubaix in a row.
How we did it
Travel
You can take the Eurostar (eurostar.com) from London St Pancras direct to Lille Europe. From there it’s a ten-minute walk to Lille Flandres station to catch a local TER train (sncf-connect.com) to Valenciennes, where the ride begins. After conquering the cobbles, the Roubaix Velodrome is a 15km ride away from Lille Europe station, or you can reach it using public transport, including the Metro.
Bike transport
At time of press, Eurostar won’t take bikes (even boxed) on the journey to or from Lille, so you will need to arrange bike hire. However it does claim to be in the process of reviewing its bike transport policy, so fingers crossed for the future. At present, Eurostar will take bikes on a handful of trains to Brussels and Paris each day, but only if they’re disassembled and boxed. Bike-friendly connections are available from Paris and Brussels, but will add two or three hours to your journey.
Thanks
Many thanks to Pascal from Lapierre (lapierrebikes.com) for providing bikes and assisting our photographer around the pavé-stricken route.
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