Oudenaarde

The names are familiar — Koppenberg, Kwaremont, Oudenaarde — but the surfaces are not. This gravel reading of De Ronde turns the Flemish Ardennes sideways, mixing iconic cobbles with singletrack and farm tracks that most road riders never see.

Clockwise through the Flemish Ardennes, the Spartacus route is built for riders who want the bergs stacked in the right direction — and who are willing to finish on the Koppenberg when the day has already taken everything else.

A 525-kilometre bikepacking pilgrimage across Flanders, its distance a nod to Eddy Merckx's 525 career wins, stringing together the finales of the region's spring classics from the orchards of Haspengouw to the war-scarred fields around Ypres.

The longer road to the Muur. At 115 kilometres and over 1,600 metres of climbing, the Red Loop is the most demanding of the three signposted routes out of Oudenaarde, built around a single destination: the Muur van Geraardsbergen. Getting there, though, means working through a string of climbs that rarely make headlines outside the Flemish Ardennes.

A 102-kilometre loop built almost entirely around cobbles — Huisepontweg, Doorn, the historic Paddestraat, and the pivotal Molenberg — guided in spirit by Sep Vanmarcke, one of the finest cobble specialists never to win the Ronde outright.

The shortest of the three signposted Tour of Flanders loops, an 80-kilometre circuit out of Oudenaarde that opens with the race's most iconic trio — Oude Kwaremont, Paterberg, Koppenberg — and doesn't let up much after that.