Erstellt am: 18. 6. 2013 - 05:00 Uhr

Retro Riding

The bikes were vintage, the clothes were vintage - but after 173km my legs just felt plain old. The In Velo Veritas bike ride.

Riding down a steep cobbled road on a 1980s steel-framed road bike is a bone-shaking experience. I should have liked to have admired the picturesque wine cellars as a rattled by, but I was struggling to feel the brakes as my hands grew numb. I felt disaster might be imminent. Then at the bottom I had to busy my tingling fingers with the tricky task of shifting down gears with the stiff lever on the frame of the bike, so that I could climb the even narrower, cobbled alley up the other side.

As I clunked up the slope with my thighs on fire and my hands grasping the handle-bars, I had a new born respect for Eddy Merckx and the heroes of the golden age of cycling.

chris cummins

Retro bike rides are all the rage in Europe right now. This time-travelling escapism - a rose-tinted return to a world of woollen jerseys, and peaked caps - had always appealed to my well-evolved sense of romance. Given that I own neither a classic bike nor the kit to wear on it, I felt at ease waxing lyrical about the beauty of the idea without ever actually having to turn a single pedal. Then my generous friend Wolfgang called my bluff by organising a bike and shirt for me and so, short of excuses now, I found myself in Wolkersdorf, in some early morning drizzle, at the start line of the In Velo Veritas bike odyssey.

Wolfgang Gerlich

This 173km ride through the narrow, undulating roads in Weinviertel and the Czech Republic was founded by Horst Watzl, a veteran of the Vienna bike scene with an almost childlike enthusiasm for all things bicycle related. The monster he has created is open to anyone who can get hold of a 25 year old bike and the clothes to match. The homepage said that I would need “endurance, precision, skilfulness, attention, tactics and respect” to complete the course. Of those worth attributes I knew I had none, apart from, of course, a healthy respect for the 100 mile course, but I reasoned that one out of six is better than none out of six.

Besides, and this was the most appealing aspect for me, it is a ride rather than a race. Your only competitor is the onset of nightfall so instead of wolfing down power bars and sticky gels you sit down and get to eat soup, sandwiches and cake at in leisure in shady green wine gardens. It`s like grandpa said, the old days were more civilised.

Soon after the start the bunched field of cyclists broke apart, the line now stretched out by rolling climbs on the narrow roads. The June sun, which had defeated the early clouds, had started to beat down from above and the fittest of the In Velo Veritas cyclists had already disappeared over the horizon.

I`d arrived at the start on my own but obviously I didn`t want to ride as a lone Billy No Mates, so, I took the only sensible course of action in a vintage ride: I latched onto the best dressed riders I could find and hid in their wind-shadow.

It turned out that Floor, Boris and Stijn had been beamed in from Belgium in the year 1972. Impressively, along with the woollen jersey, netted gloves, short-shorts and a short-peaked cap, Boris was sporting a classic old-school Belgian moustache. He also had a maroon woollen jersey from the L’Eroica in Tuscany – the 205km Godmother of the retro revival.

chris cummins

The only draw-back to my chosen group was that I can`t understand much Flemish, but I didn't have much to say anyway and my new friends' conversation seemed to consist of guttural, jolly chuckles that I found highly motivating. When we passed anywhere scenically interesting Flor pointed and uttered the only Flemish expression I am familiar with: “Wow!”

They were, in short, perfect company, apart from when they became annoyingly cheerful about the dreaded cobbles, telling me, in English, that it reminded them of home and the Tour of Flanders. I suppose they just missed the wind and the rain and the mud.

The organisers had chalked pink arrows onto the road, so it was easy for us to follow the higgledy-piggledy route as it took us past castles, giant farmhouses, vineyards and orchards. The good thing about predominantly sticking to small roads is that we rarely saw a car, but it also meant that some of the tracks were more suitable for mountain-biking than narrow wheeled road bikes. As well as the cobbles there were bumpy sections of gravel and even patches of sand. Even this was retro - the pioneers of the Tour de France spent most of their days on unsurfaced roads. No-wonder they were national heroes.

Riding a vintage bike takes some getting used to. You`re strapped onto the pedals rather than clipped in and when my bike back wheel slid in the sand it was quite terrifying. Changing gear was difficult with the lever on the frame. I always had to look down, usually swerving dangerously as I did so, and when, on a technical section, I did try to change while still looking at the road ahead, I almost put my fingers in the whirring spokes.

chris cummins

I was a vintage virgin, but there were a lot of real bike aficionados on route. I met a Spanish guy, dressed in Basque orange who said he travelled the world taking part in such events and blogging about them. The In Velo Veritas was proving to be one of his favourite events, although a shorter recent ride in his home country had stuck in his mind: “They only gave you wine to drink.” Well the legends of the early Tours de France apparently survived on salami and brandy. They also died young.

When we soberly stopped for sensible, refreshing grape juice and things to eat there was a lot of mutual admiring of bikes and some technical questions about gears cables and rims, to which I could only respond by nodding and smiling or pretending I only understood Finnish. But these bike freaks must have been in seventh heaven at the start line as stalls sprang up selling vintage bikes, parts and jerseys. There were surely collector’s items on offer if you knew what you were looking for.

chris cummins

We had set off at nine in the morning but the shadows were already long as I tumbled down some more cobbles, more in hope than expectation, and turned into the finish at Wolkersdorf. We`d been in the saddle for the best part of ten hours. It had felt like an epic journey.

I was mildly impressed with my achievement until I bumped into Louise, another girl from Belgium, who trumped me:

“We did on a tandem. It was the best thing ever.”

That`s next year`s challenge.