Flanders, the coal mining connection ...

A brief extract from Ed Pickering's 'The Ronde; inside the Tour of Flanders, the World's toughest bike race' (London, 2018). 'Brakel is a small town sitting right in the Flemish Ardennes between Geraardsbergen and Oudenaarde....I got taliking to Guy who works for a software development company in Brussels, a hard commute to and from each day, but he pointed out that has always been the way for people in Brakel. "My grandparents went to the mines in Wallonia, there were special trains from Brakel to Charleroi and Mons to work. It was a hard life. Now I'm doing the same thing, except I'm going t... Mehr ...