Half an hour from Folkestone and then just over two hours to Brakel, a small town in the south of Flanders, handily placed for the Ronde van Vlaanderen loops, three circuits of the region: red, yellow and blue, between 80km and 115km, each carefully planned to ferret out the steepest of hills in this flattest of countries, and all punctuated with sections of teeth-shattering cobbles.