Cycling stops in Flanders

Flanders is where road cycling keeps its liturgy: the Ronde in April, the cobbled bergs of the Flemish Ardennes, the Zesdaagse filling Ghent's Kuipke velodrome in winter.

The bergs themselves are tiny. The Paterberg is 370 metres, the Koppenberg the same, the Muur climbs less than a hundred metres above the Dender. They are famous because they are paved in squared granite blocks, and because a hundred years of racing has arranged them into an afternoon.

Between them sit the cafés, and in Ghent the velodrome. De Karper beside the Kuipke is the Keisse family's brown café, and has been the Six Days' living room for as long as anyone can remember.