Today was a longer day, meaning another longest ride ever for Lloyd.

We made a point to stop regularly for him to stretch out his hip. As the trip wore on he loosened up and in my opinion his pace was strong.

Excluding that breakfast weirdness, the day started well enough but it was soon my turn to suffer.

A fierce headache

My underlying tension, effort of the day before and ongoing neck problems triggered a massive migraine by mid morning when we stopped for coffee and cake. We had just turned west after picking up the same Ostend to Ghent canal as the day before, meandering down from Bruges until close to Ghent itself. It was a very pretty and easy path to ride.

These headaches are so frustrating. Starting out the day, everything was OK-ish, but after 20 miles of easy riding the migraine had fully kicked in.

The discovery that I had ONE dose and one dose only left of the painkillers I usually take to knock back a migraine was a problem – my neck has been known to trigger multiple days of pain. Knowing we had a full agenda for the coming days really had disaster written all over it. I wanted to enjoy the trip after all and was certain I had more doses than it turned out I had.

I couldn’t finish my cake during our pitstop (underfueling too – not helpful), nor could I shift the headache. I should have sought out a pharmacy there and then while we supped coffee, as it was Saturday morning and shops shut early.

By the time we reached Tielt for lunch (another well kept Belgium town) I could barely see straight and missed out on a delicious looking omelette and chips in a lovely family restaurent. It was presided over by an amusingly officious maitre’d but I was feeling really nauseous and had that sinking feeling that my weekend was over.

A detour

Gordon and I searched for painkillers but nowhere was open. The chaps very kindly and discretely decided to alter the route to pass by the only open-all-hours pharmacy we could find, in Roeselare. At the same time, I took the decision to take that final dose. It was Monte Carlo or bust.

Our detour knocked 4 miles off the route and involved miles of urban guerilla cycling beside busy roads but at least we found the pharmacy. Unfortunately, it turned out Belgium pharmacies won’t supply codeine-based painkillers without a prescription.

Blast! Once they have their teeth in you these sort of headaches can be a devil to shift, but I was stuck with ibuprofen only. It’s not like I was asking for Tramadol! And still I had no option for later in the weekend.

I took a dose of ibuprofen on top of my earlier, stronger codiene + ibuprofen pills an hour or two before. It was the best I could do, with Simon kindly offering the option of his diclofenac if the problem persisted.

Homing in on Ypres

Back on the planned route, by the time we reached the outskirts of Ypres I was grateful to the chaps for shepherding me along. Guilty too. Who knows how much nicer the original route would have been instead of the scabby detour?

Either way, we would not have avoided another day of fierce headwinds, the wind having helpfully swung round to blow full in our faces as we rode west. On a very flat part of the world, Mark and JR developed a friendly rivalry for nominal King of the Mountains points over the course of the day, both sprinting off at opportune moments to grab points on innocuous inclines.

The arrival in the Ypres environs brought with it the purpose of our visit, an exploration of the battlefields and memorials of the Great War.

Relief

By now my headache had changed. I was seeing (feeling?) light at the end of the tunnel.

These are always the strangest moments for me, going from utterly tormented and not knowing how to help yourself to a palpable loosening of the vice. You know you haven’t really fixed anything, but at least there’s a sense an episode will soon be behind you.

There is no rhyme or reason at all to this.

I’ve rarely had recovery happen mid-day and more often try and sleep it off to wake after a poor nights sleep and an unchanged situation. What an opportune moment then for recovery as we neared Ypres; now I felt able to engage with what I was seeing.

The German Langemark cemetery and the Canadian Saint Julien Memorial

At Langemark, our engagement with the German cemetery was slightly hampered by hundreds of truck drivers protesting ‘something’ (maybe their shiny new tractor units weren’t new enough). They were driving their tractor units through town and it must have taken 20 mins for them to pass through with horns blaring. They really were unhappy. So unhappy it was a risk just to cross the road, as no-one was slowing.

We made it across eventually and entered the German Langemark cemetery. Even with the noise outside it is a sombre place. The German site – for historic as well as cultural reasons – doesn’t seek to celebrate anything. I felt it more a case of honouring and respecting their fallen, but it could be I was swayed by the use of of dark granite for their memorial, rather than the use of light Portland stone for the Allied monuments.

Around 10,000 flat plaques are laid in the ground along with columns of names of the 24,000 more buried in a mass grave in front of you. There’s also a wall at the entrance with 3,000 names of students killed in the First Battle of Ypres – a fact that may or may not have been used to construct a myth.

Just two miles away, our next stop was the St. Julien Canadian war memorial of the ‘Brooding Soldier’, marking the site of the first use of chlorine gas in the war. It’s a powerful monument 10m tall and commemerates how Canadian solders managed to hold the line for two days, suffering heavy losses after the gas did its deadly job on their Allied comrades.

Tyne Cot cemetery

From the St. Julien memorial, another three miles brought us to Tyne Cot cemetery as the sun moved lower in the sky. Named after the appearance of concrete blockhouses from a distance, the hill has 12,000 Commonwealth soldiers commemorated along with 34,000 soldiers with no known grave from August 1917 onward.

On entering the cemetery, the gravestones stand in seried rows but appear to be blank. It’s only when you move round them you see they ‘face’ the hill the were attacking when they fell.

The sun was moving down the sky toward what would be a fine evening but the gravestones had their backs to it. Further up the hill is a wall of yet more names and a visitor centre commemorating nearly 35,000 people in total.

As with all the sites we visited, I could have spent much longer but the aim of the trip was to get an overview of the battlefields. In some ways too, stopping and examining every last detail is just too much to take in at one time.

Ypres and the Menin Gate

Leaving Tyne Cot, we headed into Ypres, just 6 miles further up the road. That’s how close the lines were to the strategically imporant town of Ypres in WW1. On the way in we passed so many other memorials and nearby cemeteries we could have taken all day; there’s a lot to see.

In fact, we entered the town via the Menin Gate (currently undergoing restoration) and after getting showered and settled at the rather nice Albion hotel, strolled back the few hundred yards for the Last Post.

This is a stunning act of Remembrance, taking place every day at 8:00pm. The Gate was packed with people for the ceremony and Lloyd, MarkC and myself stood just outside while the others immersed themself in the crowd.

I was thinking, ‘this isn’t really for me’ and didn’t want to get too close when it clearly meant a lot to others. But, it caught me out. Of course it’s about me, and everyone else there too. We listened in the stillness of the crowd to the lone bugle, then a reading (we will remember them…) and then Ave Maria sung by an invisible (to me) choir. I was floored; it got me completely.

Time to relax

We capped a hard day off with a meal in the Restaurent Vivaldi, chosen at random but it turned out to be a good choice. I had yet to fully enjoy a meal on this break despite it being one of my top priorities, so ordered steak and frites and a pint of the Wipers ale.

I had a lovely meal I’m pleased to say, and a word to the wise – our excellent waitress described how she struggles to understand cooking instructions for steak, particularly when English is not her first language. So I’ve determined that all cooking instructions can now be simplified to ‘pink’ or ‘not pink’ and I reckon most people will get exactly what they want with that!

We ended the evening with a clear, darkening sky over the Cloth Hall and St. Martins Cathedral which promised another fine day for our last day.

Little was I to know that my choices and experiences so far on this trip would play out on Day 3: Ypres to Dunkirk. The Kemelberg, Bayernwald and Sanctuary Hill awaited.

About the author

Matt is one of the founding Molefathers of the Muddymoles, and is the designer and main administrator of the website.

Having ridden a 2007 Orange Five for many years then a 2016 YT Industries Jeffsy 29er, he now rocks a Bird Aether 9 and a Pace RC-627.

An early On-One Inbred still lurks in the back of the stable as a reminder of how things have moved on. You can even find him on road bikes - currently a 2019 Cannondale Topstone 105 SE, a much-used 2011 Specialized Secteur and very niche belt drive Trek District 1.

If you've ever wondered how we got into mountain biking and how the MuddyMoles started, well wonder no more.