Flog down to Paul London’s abode in Ramsgate, there to meet with Dave Richards, arriving by ferry and train from the Isle of Wight, and Paul, who lives there… The following morning saw a Ghentle potter down to Dover, enlivened by a front puncture on your Editor’s machine, and into the ferry terminal, where we met…

Monday 10th July

Team Kingcycle, being the evergreen Slash, myself and head honcho JK, gathered at Kingcycle HQ at early o’clock before playing with the traffic in the loaded Voyager en route to Dover. Steve again proved his uncanny ability for sleeping by dozing off fairly rapidly. We arrived somewhat early, followed shortly by Susan Laughton (coach), Ian Chattington (van), Paul London (Kingcycle and trailer), Dave Richards (Merlin ‘tourer’) and Dave Larrington (Kingcycle and Cartman). We watched the hovercraft do its gliding up the ramp and deflating trick before boarding the SeaCat for an uneventful crossing to Ostend. Those riding piled luggage into Ian’s van, and we headed off in our separate ways to Ghent. Well anyway, the navigating/driving dream team of me and Slash found our hotel first time, then we headed round to the base for the week’s activities, the Blaarmeersen – some sort of general sports park, in this case boasting a partially covered wooden 250m velodrome – or piste to slip into the local lingo.

Found lurking at the campsite café were Pete Cox and Barbara Goode, and shortly along came Geoff Bird and Fiona Grove, and the Donaldson Clan. Pete had managed to deck his bike on the ride over, but JK came to the rescue with a bit of ply and a hacksaw to have him up and running again. The track was open for practice at 8pm, so we had some food and hung around until we could try the boards. Quite a nice little track – grippier than Manchester, similar shape. Having done plenty of track, but none on a recumbent, I found it rather unnerving to start with, but after a few laps on the Wasp started to settle in. I was rather more nervous about taking the faired K2 up – having only ridden it once very briefly, but it wasn’t too bad, except needing at least three laps to get up to speed. After everyone had had a few spins round, we packed up and trundled back to the hotel.

Meanwhile, Messrs. Larrington, Richards and London have made a mostly trouble-free, mainly wind-assisted and entirely flat trip along the canalside paths, via Bruges. With Dave’s day being made by finding a roadie to chase, though when we caught him up, Dave was a bit downcast. “He didn’t want to play!”, said an unhappy Mr. Richards. The trouble being your Editor’s hamfisted attempts at navigating out of Ostend, and Cartman the BoB’s mudguard losing one of its fixing bolts in Bruges. The café on the campsite has a vast bowl of spaghetti for three quid and Hoegaarden for a pound. I love this country!

Tuesday 11th July

Dawned very wet. Nothing doing at the races until the afternoon, so Slash and I went for a damp look around the city before chilling out at the hotel. The week following the Worlds was a big festival in Ghent, and there was lots being set up already – including what was apparently the biggest ever hanging basket; fairly impressive, it had a viewing gantry built into the structure holding it for looking over the city. Arrived at the track to see all sorts of strange machinery being unpacked and generally fettled – and many of the British continGhent creating chainguards out of various bits of ply and plastic, and in Susan’s case, Cartman’s mudguard. The Belgians had decided to have the machines checked – the only requirements seeming to be vaguely functional brakes and some sort of front chainguard. Much discussion ensured about Steve Donaldson’s K-drive and the flailing chains, with it eventually being allowed unfaired with the addition of a number board on the end of the strut. Much grumbling at the Swiss Birk bikes (also known as VEB – very expensive bikes, all shiny carbon), as the huge tail boxes extended round the rider’s bum, sides and shoulders – rather stretching the unfaired allowance.

Some time after 4pm the drag race kicked off. Now trying to sprint on a front wheel drive bike on wet roads just doesn’t happen, so that didn’t last long. Strangely the women were run with the men, and there was some old bloke on a single freewheel UCI bike (with only one brake too), who I think made it through to the final. General swiz – if I’d had my road bike…… Retirement to the warm indoors followed for most of the Brits. At some point later we headed back into town, finding a very nice restaurant and some large steaks before beers (well for Slash and John anyway) and bed. So day one, Team Kingcycle nil, the rest of the world everything so far.

Not much to add to this except the excitement of “losing an engine” (i.e. pulling a foot out of the pedal) at 165 rpm. Winners were Ellen van der Horst (Netherlands) and Lars Schröder (Germany). Highlight of the event was perhaps the match race between a lad on a low-slung Challenge of some variety and a small white dog on foot. The dog won, handsomely.

Wednesday 12th July

Early start to get to the track for 8am, for general setting up and practice before the 1km started at 9am. Or rather half nine as it turned out. Tim Elsdale and gNick had arrived, and Dave the Dentist turned up from somewhere, bikeless and with only one pair of shorts which could be cunningly extended into trousers….. The women were off first, so much cheering of Sherri, Fiona, Susan and Barbara. I foolishly elected to use the K2, and not only wasn’t up to speed by the end, but had trouble holding the bike down the bottom of the track too – the bagged Wasp would have been substantially quicker, but c’est la vie. The rest of the boys did their stuff, Slash making the top ten, and Ian and Steve and me (just!) the top twenty. The Belgium champion Frederik Van De Walle showed a fine turn of speed to win overall – riding unfaired, with Jürg Birkenstock (Swiss, riding a fully faired VEB) a fraction of a second back.

Next up was the team time trial – four riders (unfaired) working together in a pursuit over 10km. Slash and I arrived back after lunch to find that the ‘GB All Stars’ of us with Steve Donaldson and Dave Richards was up first against the Swiss on their VEBs. Everything was going nicely with some good teamwork until we caught the Swiss boys. The team being overtaken is meant to stay down the track, but they didn’t see the flag warning that we were coming, and their front rider pulled up the banking, then back down right across my path. Somehow I managed to go from doing 30mph on the banking down to the bottom of the track without falling off, but unfortunately the chain came off in the process. I lost a lap putting it back on, then dived back in (strictly speaking I wasn’t allowed back in, but it wasn’t my fault!), and we pushed on to finish together, in a time eventually good enough for fifth. The four laideez worked well together in their heat, and the second Brit team of Pete Cox, Dave the Dentist, gNick and Dave Larrington (on Dave’s Kestrel) had a good go too. By the time all the teams had run, it was getting on, so we headed back to the campsite café for dinner (from the snack menu – laaaarge portions), managing to disrupt most of one end of the place in the process. Day two, hmm, still no glory for us…

Much more excitement today, from the scary speed of young Frederik van de Walle, Francesco Russo’s huge red streamliner scraping its tailfin on the track as its rear suspension compressed with the “g” loading, Arnt Leo Broska doing an endo in his Leitra, a Belgian unfaired rider decking his machine a foot in front of a speeding “Iron Chatterton” and the mismatch of the decade – Jürg Birkenstock’s streamliner versus your Editor’s old heap in the 1km… The Team Time Trial was great fun, even for the “GB Also-Rans”, who hadn’t firmed up their line-up until twenty minutes before the off. We might have done better had not gNick’s mighty thighs proved too wide for the bars on Steve Donaldson’s Wasp and Dave The Dentist misrouting the chain on Rob’s Wasp, causing it to mill great chunks out of Rob’s nice shiny new derailleur.

That evening’s dinner was hysterical, largely as a result of Fiona Grove’s having drunk proper coffee for the first time in two years and going on some kind of caffeine trip. Sadly, much of what was said must remain secret in order to protect the guilty and innocent alike, but it did produce the Exchange Of The Week, when the subject of Autoclaves came up. Sherri Donaldson was under the misapprehension that an autoclave is an item commonly found in hairdressers’ establishments, rather than a great big pressure cooker for steaming your composites. Not so, said the assembled masses.

Sherri: So what are those big purple things with combs in them that y’get at the hairdressers?
Geoff Bird (not known for the length of his locks): You’re asking me!?!?!?!

Thursday 13th July

The day’s racing at the velodrome kicked off with the 4km. To save time, this was run with multiple riders on the track for the unfaired, although just two for the faired for safety. Since there was no announcement of times as the racing went on, a couple of the BHPC stopwatches appeared, which meant we could keep a track on our times and splits as we went. I had decided to use the K2 for this, after a nice spin in it first thing. After which I pumped the tyres up a bit harder….. mistake – when I went to roll it out to race it, the rear wheel wouldn’t go round. So I reverted to the bagged Wasp and hurtled round in 4:15 for fourth place, closely followed by Dave the Dentist, Ian and Slash. Meanwhile, like a F1 pit team, the BHPC lads descended on the K2, and a short while later it was back ready for action after being filed, fettled and with new tyres fitted. Thanks guys! The timing system being used was very effective – each rider was presented with a complete set of stats for their rides, with lap or half lap times and speeds and other information. Dead good for the post-race analysis!

When the BHPC descended en masse on the K2, armed with hammers, saws, files, screwdrivers, spanners and big grins, Fiona was, as usual, equal to the situation. “Look at them!” she said. “They’re as happy as pigs in ****!"

The afternoon had the flying 250m (1 lap). The unfaired folk had five laps to do their stuff, all being timed, whilst us faired lads had eight – fortunate as I didn’t think I would get up to speed in five in the K2! Finally we had some feedback from the commentators, with the speeds being called out as they were achieved. I was one of the later faired bikes, and unfortunately had to sit through watching two of the Swiss boys deck it big style whilst trying to use the banking to accelerate – these tracks aren’t really made for 70km/h…… So I stayed down the bottom of the track – the bike seemed to be handling quite a bit better since the tyre change,  but the g-forces on the banking really slow you down. I was told I was third faired with 65km/ h– but didn’t get on the podium as the categories were unfaired and open, and Frederik had apparently gone quicker than me unfaired, so got the third place in the open. Doh! Two fourth places in one day! So a rather despondent rider and designer (JK was trying to work out why the bike wasn’t going as quick as it should) at the end of the day – although good old Stephan Slade (as labelled for the week) tried his best to cheer us up. So day three, getting better, but still Team Kingcycle nowt, the rest of the world everything.

That evening, most of us went into Ghent for a dinner worthy of the late lamented Sid The Surrealist at his finest. We never did get Pete to explain fully his contention that “Ghent is Shrewsbury upside down”, nor can I quite recall what type of narcotics Geoff had been ingesting when he started talking about the most economically viable ways of extracting steel from watercress. Slightly more explicable was the Amazing Tale Of The Vibrating Hotel Room: On their return from the track, Fiona finds their room vibrating mysteriously. The manager is summoned. He checks the rooms either side, but to no avail, and confesses that he has never encountered anything like this before. Then he checks the room above. Shortly afterwards, he returns, with an Explanation. The room upstairs is occupied by a professional racing cyclist, who has been busy training on rollers J

Friday 14th July

Finally out of the track and on the road! I think we had all had enough of racing round in very small circles. The flying 200m sprint was first up – the course was alongside the rowing lake, so dead flat, and pretty smooth apart from a rough bumpy bit 100m before the start of the timed section. The wind was perfect, almost a straight tailwind, although a little gusty. It was raining on and off, but fortunately stayed off for the faired bikes, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to see…… The standard run up was 600m, not enough for the K2, so I started a bit further back, and got just over 70km/h on the first go, although I was still accelerating through the trap. So on the next go I actually started on the other side of the lake, and got up to 73km/ h, good enough for third behind Jürg Birkenstock and Sergei Dashevski on his dodgy looking-between-your-knees machine. Slash did well, getting the trusty bagged Wasp up to 69km/h, just pipping Ian and Gromit’s Sidecar – who had to abort his first run when the bumpy bit caused his wheel to turn independently from the handlebars – interesting at 40mph…… Lunch, and I introduced Slash to the idea of eating muesli to fuel up before a road race, in this case the 60km, consisting of 12 pan flat laps around the lake, including a cobbled corner, a chicane and lots of wind. Can you imagine getting closed roads and a police escort for a recumbent race on a Friday afternoon back home? No problem in Belgium!

Back in the Wasp for this one, and starting from the second row, I did my usual trick of blasting off the line into the lead (And there was me thinking Rob’s usual trick was collapsing in an untidy heap on the floor - Ed.). I kept expecting someone to come past, but they didn’t so I kept going. Being at the front I had a personal motorbike escort, but that didn’t help that much with getting passed lapped riders – I have never shouted so much in a race before. Fortunately, although there were a few close encounters, I never actually hit anybody. A few laps in it started to rain – which was fine by me, as it meant that those behind a windscreen couldn’t see, whereas I could. But I had learnt my lesson from Darley Moor, and took it very easy on the corners, since I had a nice lead by then. The great thing about the circuit was that I could look across the lake and see second, third and fourth going up the other side. And when Sergei decked it in the rain, I saw the familiar yellow brick of Slash motoring into second. Which is how we finished – Slash was almost four minutes down on me, and unbeknown to him, only thirty seconds up on third place, some tall bloke in a very pretty Quest trike. So finally a result! Talk about typical British race though – a flat circuit with rain and blowing a gale – nice. So things rather more upbeat at Team Kingcycle now – the scores; everything to us, the rest of the world nowhere!

The day finished with the ‘Human Power Feest’ at the velodrome – free beer and food laid on by the Organisators. There was a big table of baguettes laid out, but no one seemed to be prepared to make a start on it. So ducking the usual British reserve (I was hungry!), I dived in, and eventually the rest followed. The evening continued with much letching by Sherri and Fiona at the legs of the youngest member of the Brit team, but the less said about that probably the better…

My notes at this point say “Wet as ****”. I did not do the sprints, because I am lazy and incompetent, but was on site to witness Frederik van de Walle going through the traps at >71 km/h on a tail-faired bike. Possibly aided by a fortuitous increase in wind speed. Shortly after Rob’s 200 m attempt, Fiona and I are approached by a thoughtful-looking John Kingsbury. “Oh, no, no” he said. “Won’t do at all. Aerodynamics are all wrong!” When questioned as to the machine to which he was referring, I was staggered to hear that for the first time in the seventeen years I’ve known him, JK was not dissing someone else’s machine, but his own! I stagger off, clutching my head…

Not much to add to Young Master Robert’s description of the road race, save that it was definitely a day for riding faired, but head-out. Ian C and Arnt Leo Broska were the only head-in machines not to crash, as Sergei Dashevski, Charley Jochums and gNick went down. Charley’s bike has no foot flaps, but he was fortunate enough to fall over in front of Paul, who generously stopped to offer assistance, ignored the torrent of Flemish issuing from within the fairing and told the rider to “get on with it” or similar. Meanwhile Sergei had got going again, and could quite frequently be spotted opening the zipper at the top of his fairing and sticking his head out to spot the approaching corners. Several unfaired riders also went down - Geoff, Fiona, Jorg Wendebourg’s home-built prone and the Richard Blom / Jan Limburg back-to-back tandem, whose front tyre exploded at 30 mph. How the following pack of unfaired low racers avoided the wreckage was a mystery, especially as a fully-recumbent Richard Blom is well over six and a half feet long, and is lying across the circuit going “Ow!” in Dutch. The quicker unfaired people seemed to be charging around in packs, which in that kind of weather must be a similar experience to going over the Niagara Falls in a gas stove.  Danish rock-star-lookalike Mark Olaf Slot was doing a particularly convincing impersonation of a half-drowned Afghan hound.

Saturday 15th July

Back on the track today, fortunate since it was pretty wet. Not so fortunate was the strong wind blowing the rain onto the track – they had to keep stopping events and drying it out with a giant hairdryer. I slipped over discovering just how little grip wet wood provides, but the worst crash was in the first half hour criterium (scratch race) heat – I didn’t see it, but heard a big thump of bodies hitting the deck. The good news was being told that a mistake had been made and I was actually third in the flying 250m on Thursday. So although I missed the podium appearance, I still got a prize. There was much dispute about how to run the heats for the faired bikes. The Organisators were basically a bit scared about having multiple fast bikes hurtling round at the same time, particularly when one of them is Sergei and his erratic riding style. Eventually they decided to have three half hour qualifiers based on distance, with five going through to the final for an hour – in other words turning it into a time trial, which seemed to rather defeat the object of calling it a criterium. But never mind. The first heat had the three Wasps of SD, Dave the Dentist and Slash. The two Steves did a nice team time trial effort for the first fifteen minutes, before Slash headed off alone. Meanwhile Dave seemed to get faster and faster as the race went on, eventually overtaking SD.

The second heat had Ian, Sergei and me, riding the K2. Having the lightest bike, Ian went into the lead at the start, and it took me several laps getting up to speed to overhaul him. I had the bike going round at over 40mph for a while, managing to lap Sergei twice and Ian a few times, before I really started to get hot. We hadn’t sorted the ventilation on the bike yet, so there were only a couple of holes in the screen to let air in. The soap I had put on the inside of the windscreen stopped it misting, but I was getting incredibly hot, and slowing as I got hotter. Sergei had just come back past me, and we had both just gone past Ian when there was a loud bang and suddenly I was sliding round the track – a front tyre blow-out at 38mph on the banking doesn’t leave you with many options! I came to a halt on the tarmac at the bottom, and Ian was fortunately able to avoid me as I slid down the track. If you are going to crash, then I can highly recommend doing it in a full double skin carbon-Kevlar fairing – just wait until you come to a stop and climb out, nice. Unfortunately the mounting fixing the fairing to the bike broke, putting the K2 out of service – not that I could have survived an hour in it anyway. Because the race had to be stopped after twenty minutes, the half hour distances were calculated from this, putting me in the top five along with the three Swiss from the final heat, and Sergei. Slash was in sixth and Ian seventh.

In the unfaired, the Brits were rather depleted with Dave, Dave and Paul departed in the morning. I think just Pete competed, finishing seventh (?) in his heat, from which the top five (from three heats) went through to the final. The laideez went straight into the final, with Sherri gamely riding around with a nice smile. The unfaired men’s final was a very tactical race, with a popular winner in Walter Berger who timed it to perfection at the end. In the faired final, I lined up in the Wasp against all the big bikes. I was in the lead for a few laps before being caught, and I managed to lap one of the Swiss (riding the ‘Bus’, a huge great thing with clouds on the side) to hold fourth, then temporarily moved into third when the Swiss Cheese (Jürg Birkenstock’s yellow VEB) had to stop. But eventually the Bus got going and unlapped me before coming round again to lap me after half an hour. At which point I decided it wasn’t worth wasting myself since there was another day of racing yet, so changed down a gear and settled into cruise mode. The other four came past fairly regularly, but I thought I would finish with a flourish and wound it up with three minutes to go. For that short time I was the fastest thing on the track, which felt kinda good, catching and taking a lap back off the Bus in the process. Not that it made any difference to the overall result. But the hour on the track had really hurt my backside – the g-forces in doing 199 laps are quite a lot! Back in Ghent things were kicking off for the start of the festival, loads of people and lots of noise. Too tired to join in and party, particularly with the four hour ahead of us…

Dave, Paul and I did not witness any of this, no, because we went home instead. The ride back to Ostend was like the ride in, only the wind was in the wrong direction and we had more stuff to carry. I fell off on a muddy section of cycle path, lying trapped beneath a burning bike with one foot still locked into the pedal. Dave found a roadie or two to chase again, so was happy. Then the ferry was late, the crossing was vomit-inducingly rough and the Sea-Cat lost an engine in mid-Channel. Dave did a runner to the station to try (and fail) to get home that evening, while Paul and I had a hair-raising trip back to Ramsgate in the dark with utterly inadequate lights. But I did manage to get up the hill next to Dover Castle without walking J

Sunday 16th July

Final day, and with the cancellation of the 200m finals, just the four hour to contend with. Team Kingcycle was wishing for rain – not normal before a race, but a useful advantage for Wasp riders against those in full fairings. But the weather was reasonable at the start, and although there were a couple of light showers during the race, nothing very bad. I had stuffed my camelback in the boot of the bike, which should have been fine….. but unfortunately the mudguard within the box isn’t held rigidly at the bottom, and the extra weight caused it to pull across. I didn’t know this at the start, and tried to take off into the lead as before, only to find not only did the faired bikes come past me, but a lot of unfaired too! I was rather distressed, thinking my legs had gone, until Slash came up behind me and said he could smell burning! When I stopped I could hardly turn the rear wheel. Limped round to the van and used cable ties to rectify the problem, before diving back in, now two laps down – not a good start. At this point Sergei and the incredibly tall Ymte Sijbrandij (Dutch, in a faired Quest trike) were sharing the lead, and when they caught me I was able to ride with them quite comfortably, doing some turns and generally thinking I might be able to pull myself back up the field. Then after a few laps it all went pear-shaped again when I was forced to freewheel on the cobbles because of a slower rider, and the chain came off. I had just caught up with Slash again at this point too. Anyway, got going again, and was just about to overhaul Ian and Slash when they inexplicably started going away again – the wheel was rubbing again. At this point it seemed futile to continue, so I dropped out, having done two hours of the four. Very frustrating, as from the way I was riding I think I would have been top three, which would have put me third overall. Oh well. I resorted to helping SD and Slash, handing up food and drink from my bike along the straight. Slash did a blinding ride for fourth, which also leap-frogged him over me to fourth in the overall too.

So once everyone had finished and warmed up, we headed back to the velodrome for the final presentations and packing up. Slash and I finally got our moment of glory on the podium, and the Organisators took the opportunity of having our attention to stretch out thanking the sponsors and each other profusely (not that they didn’t deserve it). Tim Elsdale got more prizes for being the oldest competitor than I did for winning something, and in typical ‘The Late Tim’ style wasn’t there to go up and collect them…… But after many goodbyes and farewells, we trundled back to Ostend, with Ian and gNick in convoy, for the ferry home. Uneventful trip back, besides seeing two blokes on Ordinaries (one with a rear pannier!) getting on the boat.

During all of which I was riding back to London, but at least it didn’t rain, the sun even came out by the time I reached Dartford, and I was able make use of the Woolwich Ferry (too early on the way down), to knock some 10 km off the distance.

So a good trip, lots learnt and new friends made. Many thanks to all the Brits for making it such fun and providing so much enthusiastic support, and especially to JK for taking me along, even if he couldn’t bring himself to watch when I took the K2 on the track! And well done to the Belgians for putting on a good event at short notice – see you all in Brighton next year!

Best gag of the event: Paul, Dave and I had just cleared the city limits when Dave noticed a cow in a nearby field. Adopting his “Wise Country Dweller” persona, he opined that it would shortly be raining, as the cow was lying down. “Nonsense” retorted Mr. London, “it’s standing up, but it’s sunk three feet into the mud…”

Kudos to the HPV-Belgium gang for organisating the whole lot, the sizeable Brit posse for turning up and not taking things too seriously and Frederik Van De Walle, Rosmarie Bühler and Jürg Birkenstock, for being World Champions. Stevie D says that as HPV-Belgium are somehow affiliated with their UCI-affiliated national body, this means that Frederik, Rosmarie and Jürg are entitled to wear UCI-affiliated Rainbow Jerseys… And major thanks from the Editor to Dave Richards, who sportingly lent me both his precious Racing Bicycle and his SPD shoes for the 4 km, the 250 m Flying Lap and the Team Time Trial.