Kemmelberg
Peak · 154 m · Flanders
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Kemmelberg is the highest point in West Flanders at 154 metres, and its cobbled climb through the woods above Kemmel village has become the showpiece of Gent-Wevelgem, ridden twice with pitches reaching 20-22%. The hill was also a WWI battleground, its access roads originally built to haul munitions up to gun emplacements on the summit. A steep, storied stop for anyone tracing the Flemish Ardennes.
The road narrows into the trees and turns to rough cobbles as it climbs, kicking up to a stinging 23 percent in the final 200 metres before the summit. Gent-Wevelgem didn't add the Kemmelberg to its route until 1955, and the climb stayed an unpaved dirt track for another year before it was finally cobbled in 1956. A gentler Belvedere ascent climbs the opposite side of the hill, shorter at 500 metres but with similarly steep pitches near 20 percent. The hill's older history is grimmer: in April 1918, British troops held the summit against a German assault for two days before French reinforcements took over, only for the Germans to storm back six days later behind flamethrowers and nearly a hundred aircraft that dropped some 700 bombs on the hill. A French military cemetery on the slope below holds 5,294 soldiers from that fighting, just 57 of them identified.
What you see
A stone column topped by a robed, melancholy figure known as the Sad Angel of Kemmel Hill rises from the summit, above rows of French war graves lower on the slope.
part of: Cafés at the foot of the climbpart of: The cobbled bergs of Flanderspart of: The pavé of Paris–Roubaixwwi battlefield