Nothing here is long. The Paterberg is three hundred and seventy metres and the Koppenberg is the same again. You could ride either in under two minutes, and you will remember both for years.
What makes them famous is underfoot: squared granite blocks laid a century ago, greasy in the rain, with the crown of the road pitched away from you and a hedge close on either side. A ten per cent ramp on asphalt is a gear change. The same ramp on wet sett, with two hundred people deciding at once who gets the good line, is why people fly to Belgium in April.
Several of the climbs the guidebooks still call bergs have quietly been resurfaced. These are the ones that kept their stones.