Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Nevis Trey's Farm. My name is Ned Bolting. It's going to be one of those

podcasts today where I go to a bike race in a foreign country for reasons, really. I've got a spring in my step.

The sun is out. I'm literally going to be doing one of those rambling pods where I will scatter into your

lives a few interviews, hopefully with some bicycle riders, men and women. I'll give you a little bit

of a flavour of a bicycle race. I would warrants you probably know very little about. And I will

talk about a bicycle race that is happening probably today when

you're listening to this podcast a little bicycle race known as the Ronda von Flanderen.

I'm not far actually from Belgium but I'm just over the border in the Netherlands, literally

just over the border a stone's, literally just over the border, a stone's throw from

the border, almost, almost literally. I am in, well, I'm actually just on the outskirts of Maastricht at the

moment, in the Dutch province of Limburg, where I am going to be calling in on tomorrow,s, uh, races, the men's and women's,

nah, I knew I'd do this. I've actually forgotten what they're called now because they've

been, oh look at that. Sorry, I've just seen by the side of the road,

this is one of these little caves. All caves all these um all these hills that kind of

flank the the river moos mass or meuse whatever you want to call it two different languages

three different names in this area the mars meuse but anyway the hills that flank are riddled with

these little caves that have been used for centuries, millennia even.

This is Neolithic man territory. They used to mine flint here back in the day a long time ago.

Anyway, I've forgotten the name of the race. It's called the something like the NRX classic, is that right, these days?

Having attracted a sponsor, whose name? I may have just got wrong. I think it's NRX, I'll double check that,

but you might know it better as the Volta Limburg, a Dutch one-day race, on the eve of the Tour of Flanders,

and that's going to be the centre of my attention today but I'm also going to be as I say

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