Muur van Geraardsbergen
Flanders
Gradient by colour: under 3% 3–6% 6–9% 9%+
Stats computed from OpenStreetMap and satellite elevation data — approximate.
Muur van Geraardsbergen is a 0.9 km cycling climb averaging 6.6% (+60 m), rising from 40 m to 100 m in Flanders.
For a quarter century the place the Ronde was decided: penultimate climb from 1988 to 2011, ramps touching 20% on the way to the chapel on the Oudenberg, where Cancellara rode away from Boonen in 2010. When the 2012 route dropped it, locals carried a coffin up the cobbles. It returned in 2017, and since 2019 it is the penultimate climb of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
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Severien Malfait
Sven-eric
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Where it bites
Steepest 250 m: 10.2% (km 0.4–0.6).
Road: cobbled throughout
| section | to | avg |
|---|
| 0–100 m | 44 m | 3.8% |
| 100–200 m | 50 m | 6.5% |
| 200–300 m | 53 m | 9.7% |
| 300–400 m | 58 m | 3.6% |
| 400–500 m | 68 m | 8.5% |
| 500–600 m | 77 m | 8.2% |
| 600–700 m | 86 m | 8.4% |
| 700–800 m | 93 m | 8.7% |
| 800–900 m | 99 m | 4.8% |
What it’s like to ride
The Muur starts in the middle of Geraardsbergen, up through the town square on pedestrianised roads and onto wide, neatly packed town cobbles, and for a few hundred metres it flatters you. The smoothness gives way to the Oude Bergstraat: rough, uneven, badly cambered stones, the houses giving way to garages and trees, the road cut into the hillside with muddy banking washing dirt across it. Where it looks like a dead end you take the track to the right and the wall proper arrives, the steepest ramps touching 20% on cobbles laid with a step-like offset so you can never get a rhythm on them. A left onto a narrow cobbled strip brings the Hemelryck pub on your left and the first sight of the chapel on your right, and the gradient eases for the last of it up to the Chapel of Our Lady of Oudenberg at 110 m, where there are always a dozen amateurs taking photographs. No water or café at the summit itself: the cafés are back down in town, Bar Gidon on the Market Square among them, festooned with race-worn jerseys.
History
The road climbs the Oudenberg, the hill above Geraardsbergen, to the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Oudenberg chapel, a pilgrimage site where a hermit's dwelling is recorded in 1294 and where the present neo-Baroque chapel was built in 1906. The hill was protected as a landscape in 1940, the cobbled road was listed as a monument in 1995, and in March 2004 Flemish minister Paul Van Grembergen reopened the Muur after a rebuild costing about €1.26 million. The Ronde van Vlaanderen used it from 1950 and regularly from the 1970s, added the loop up to the chapel in 1981 (the Kapelmuur), and from 1988 to 2011 ran it as the penultimate climb, always followed by the Bosberg before the finish at Meerbeke. Fabian Cancellara countered Tom Boonen here in 2010 and rode away to win the Ronde alone. When the finish moved to Oudenaarde in 2012 the climb was cut from the route and locals carried a coffin up the cobbles in protest; it returned in 2017 roughly 95 km from the line, and since 2019 it has been the penultimate climb of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. The Tour de France has crossed it twice, in 2004 and again in 2019, when it was the first climb of that year's race out of the Brussels Grand Départ.
Common questions
- How long and steep is Muur van Geraardsbergen?
- Muur van Geraardsbergen is a 0.9 km cycling climb averaging 6.6% (+60 m), rising from 40 m to 100 m in Flanders.
- Where is Muur van Geraardsbergen steepest?
- The steepest 250 m averages 10.2%, between km 0.4 and km 0.6 of the climb.
- Is Muur van Geraardsbergen cobbled, and for how far?
- Yes. 0.9 km of Muur van Geraardsbergen's 0.9 km are laid in sett or cobblestone (cobbled throughout), measured from OpenStreetMap surface tags along the climb.
0.9 km · +60 m · 6.6% avg · ~10.2% max · 40 → 100 m